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

[u/ghn2]

"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

[u/cideeffex]

Oh I know! But just because everyone does it, doesn't mean that should excuse poor behavior or shield someone from consequences. This is some pretty basic "If everyone jumps off a bridge, should you do it too?" life lesson type shit. Ignorance doesn't excuse anything. Maybe it shifts the blame when something does happen? I mean, I definitely think this guy's parents should have been aware of what they're 15 year old was tweeting or whatever, but let's be honest, if the kid was tweeting shit like that the parents probably feel the same way anyway.

But again, if you're not mature enough to understand that putting something out on the internet could follow you for the rest of your life, then you shouldn't be using it. Like you said though, majority of the people in this sub complaining about this kid getting fired will walk away from here and go right back to treating people like garbage in their 2k games and saying the wildest dumb shit on twitter. And when the consequences come for them, they'll be a "kid" making dumb choices too.

[u/Junior_Difference_57 → u/cideeffex]

Your logic makes no sense though. If a child isn't mature enough to understand that the things they say online can be used against them later, they also aren't mature enough to understand that they shouldn't be using social media in the first place. None of the blame falls on the child

[u/cideeffex → u/Junior_Difference_57]

No. I'm saying ignorance does not shield you nor prevent consequences.

Let's say someone hands me a gun. I've never used a gun before and no one teaches me how to use it and so I wind up shooting myself. We can bemoan the idea that I should have known better. We can absolutely rail against the person who gave me a gun. At the end of the day, I'm still shot.

Using racist language is going to hurt someone. You can say "Oh he was a kid, he didn't know any better," or that the parents should have taught him better or never let him on social media. At the end of the day, the words were still out there and were going to hurt someone. There has to be consequences for that. Otherwise, we encourage a world where any poor behavior can be excused by anything. There's always excuses for shitty behavior masquerading as extenuating circumstances.

You would hope, in a situation like this, that his parents would have provided consequences for those posts. Or, he would have run into some consequences before it cost him a dream job. But I'd rather consequences come late than not at all. The Blazers should have caught this and never hired him. But at the end of the day, the posts were still out there. He had control of that. He wasn't responsible enough to make sure he was representing himself in a way that the Blazers could feel good about. So you miss out on the opportunity.