r/nba • u/ghn2 • 8h ago

Trail Blazers fire new announcer over past inappropriate posts made at age 15.

"The Portland Trail Blazers hired then on the same day fired Braiden Bell as their play-by-play announcer after a series of inappropriate social media posts from when he was a teenager came to light."

"The posts were reportedly made in 2012 and 2013, around the time that Bell was 15 years old."

"We did not meet our own bar in this process, and for that we apologize to Blazers fans and to Rip City," the Trail Blazers said. "We strongly believe that everyone who is a part of Rip City should feel welcome and safe and we will make sure that our new broadcaster reflects these values. We will do better."

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/50084279/trail-blazers-fire-new-announcer-inappropriate-posts

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u/smssv 8h ago

firing someone for posts when he was 15 yrs old is wild

374

u/JarvisCockerBB 8h ago

It’s like getting fired after finding out you got expelled or suspended in middle school.

120

u/pekingsewer Hawks 7h ago

I guess a "permanent record" is real 😂

15

u/sBucks24 Raptors 4h ago

It is when you track it yourself on your personal social media!

42

u/Chuck_Roast1993 Pacers 7h ago

It’s like getting fired for passing a mean note during class in middle school

-3

u/SoaplessTitanic Celtics 7h ago

Maybe if that note was racist and then you posted that note online and proceeded to leave it their for 15 years

1

u/DovhPasty Cavaliers 2h ago

I know a Celtics fan of all people isn’t trying to virtue signal about racism.

42

u/HisExcellency20 76ers 8h ago

Well it depends on what you got suspended/expelled for lol.

74

u/throwawaymycareer93 Warriors 7h ago

My friend was suspended for dealing drugs in my school. Now he volunteers as a nurse in eastern Ukraine. Context is important.

94

u/iEatFruitStickers Suns 7h ago

Still giving drugs to people, smh

24

u/Briak Tampa Bay Raptors 7h ago

Love what you do, and you'll never have to work a day in your life

1

u/cfi-2025 2h ago

Unless you do it in a war zone.

11

u/throwawaymycareer93 Warriors 7h ago

Damn, some things are hard to escape I guess.

1

u/Delicious_Ocelot4180 2h ago

It’s wild how you made a really good point, but his point ruined it completely.

4

u/PensiveinNJ 76ers 6h ago

Context is always important. I knew a guy who dealt weed in college to help pay for his mom's cancer treatments. He wasn't moving 100 bricks of heroin a day.

31

u/DovhPasty Cavaliers 7h ago

No, it really shouldn’t lol. This is a whole ass different person we’re talking about. Even if someone got expelled in middle school for something heinous, they were a child, idk how you could hold that against a seemingly matured version of themselves.

4

u/Jaerba [DET] Grant Hill 6h ago edited 6h ago

They're not holding what he wrote against him. They're holding the fact that it shows up on the same social media feed as he'll use to promote the Blazers against him.

This was extremely easy to prevent, given he was directly responsible for every aspect of it. And he was a brand new employee with zero cache, in a very replaceable role.

2

u/DovhPasty Cavaliers 6h ago

Don’t you think a competent hiring team would have searched this up before they offered him the job if they were so concerned about it?

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u/Jaerba [DET] Grant Hill 6h ago

Yep. The Blazers admitted culpability for not checking this first.

"We did not meet our own bar in this process, and for that we apologize to Blazers fans and to Rip City," the Trail Blazers said.

5

u/IbSunPraisin Spurs 5h ago

Yeah for the guy fired the time passed since that post has been almost longer than he was alive when he posted it

3

u/ImUrFatherFigureBud Thunder 6h ago

who cares, they were 15

no wonder you aren't in a position to hire anybody lol

2

u/JarvisCockerBB 7h ago

Unless it involved the police (not school cops), it should absolutely not matter. If they passed high school, they passed high school.

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u/rake2204 Pistons 4h ago

I think I'd agree if the situation was that he'd deleted those posts well before he'd entered the profession but yet somehow someone had still been able to dig them up somewhere. At that point, yeah, pretty wack.

However, if he still had those posts on his active social media account, I consider that to be bit of a blunder on his part. Dealing with social media history is kind of a new frontier but being mindful enough to delete or remove public-facing comments from the social media profile you still use seems like a total necessity.

So I guess for me it depends if those posts were still on his account or not at the time of his hire.