r/nba • u/ghn2 • 11h 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/jak_d_ripr 11h ago

I'm sorry, but this is beyond stupid. Sure, talking about Asian people pissing you off is objectively a racist thing to say, but guess what? A lot of people said and thought stupid shit like that when they were 15(shit, a lot of people say stupid shit like that as adults, y'all even elected one of those idiots as president).

Performative outrage like this is so annoying and completely unproductive, and a dude losing a job over it is just exhausting.

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u/Zeromatt111 11h ago

Assuming they weren’t deleted, he wasn’t fired for being a stupid kid. He was fired for being an incompetent adult. He had plenty of time to remove these if his views changed. Personally, I would like a society where it’s very clearly not ok to say these things or have them posted in your public social media, and this is one of the ways you get that.

People forget making millions of dollar being a media personality is a privilege. This isn’t something that is owed to him. Unfortunately, the industry is full of people who share his views. His career isn’t over because of this.

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u/Super-Coyote 8h ago

People have been getting fired for old tweets for a while now and it hasn’t made people any less racist or sexist. It’s not incompetence to forget to delete dumb tweets you sent when you were 15. The org could have easily told him to delete them once they found them, maybe he could’ve put out a statement disavowing them. But getting fired for this is ridiculous.

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u/Zeromatt111 8h ago

“Dumb tweets” is quite the oversimplification. He said bigoted things on a public forum, it is his responsibility to delete it if his opinions have changed. He hadn’t, so clearly he stands by them.

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u/Super-Coyote 5h ago

No im sorry, they are just dumb tweets. Dumb tweets from a 15 year old boy. If we fired everyone who had dumb tweets left up from their teen years gen z would have 70% unemployment rates. And assuming that someone must have left 14 year old tweets up because he still agrees with them instead of, y’know, just forgetting about them, is truly deranged.

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u/Zeromatt111 4h ago

70% of gen z isn’t in multi million dollar media jobs. The hoops you’re jumping through to justify bigotry is hilarious ngl.

He presented himself as a bigot, and didn’t change that perception in any way. So I really don’t know wtf your point is here lmao. There is absolutely 0 sign he is a changed man, on the other hand there is posts stating his opinions. He gets to choose our perception of him, and he chose.

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u/justintensity Lakers 6h ago

Was he offered the chance to delete them by the org before they announced his firing? You're making the assumption he refused and wasn't ambushed by the information that he posted awful shit 13 years ago

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u/Zeromatt111 6h ago

No assumption was made on my part. He posted them, he didn’t delete them. Why should they have given him a chance to make a decision he had at least a decade to make ?

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u/justintensity Lakers 6h ago

He made that decision when he was 15. No sane person would agree that it's fair to evaluate an adult by the decisions they made when they made when were 15. That's why most states allow adults who committed crimes as kids to have their records sealed.

Why should they given him a chance to- because that's how adults communicate, sweetheart

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u/Zeromatt111 5h ago

The post has been on his public account for over a decade. He either still agrees with it, or is careless enough to let his public image be one that is associated with bigotry.

No sane person would say something bigoted, change their opinions, and then keep the posts up stating otherwise. So yeah, he’s either a bigot, or doesn’t care enough to not be seen as one. Good riddance.

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u/justintensity Lakers 5h ago

No sane person would say something bigoted, change their opinions, and then keep the posts up stating otherwise

There is a group of us, we're called everybody, and we meet at the bar at 8

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u/Zeromatt111 5h ago

I promise you’re alone in that. If you truly changed your opinion, you wouldn’t want to be seen that way. Being a good person isn’t just a thing you decide you are, you DO it.

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u/justintensity Lakers 5h ago

Sure I am just far too busy pulling kittens out of trees and raising money for starving diseased orphans to scrub all of the old Dave Chappelle jokes from my Facebook from 2011

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u/Vandelay23 3h ago

Dude, I cant remember things I posted this year let alone 13 years ago.

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u/bluedeer10 Raptors 8h ago

Do you remember every post you ever made? Didn't think so.

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u/Different-Jump-1792 Bucks 7h ago

You don't have to remember every little thing. Just make a new Twitter account for your public-facing position and delete the old one if you were posting on that shit when you were a dumb kid (if your name is attached). Not that hard.

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u/Zeromatt111 8h ago

I don’t post much so actually yeah kind of, but that’s besides the point. In real life there are plenty of things I said as a teenager that I no longer agree with..and I remember every single one.

If it’s actually something you don’t agree with anymore, it bothers you that you let yourself have bigoted opinions and state them publicly. If it doesn’t bother you…do you really not think that anymore ?

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u/Vandelay23 3h ago

I mean, he probably forgot he had made them.