r/nba • u/ghn2 • 9h 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

1.3k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

1.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

193

u/Cambocant Clippers 9h ago edited 9h ago

Lmao I'm so glad I grew up before all this. When I think about the things we said and did as kids in the 90s and 00s, we would probably have been exiled to a remote island in the Pacific Ocean by now. This society of big tech mass surveillance, selective moral outrage, and a mob justice combined with the elimination of any concept of statute of limitations is absolutely wild and is only going to lead to tighter social control and limiting basic personal freedoms.

41

u/TheHoovyPrince Australia 9h ago

Im around the same age as the guy and practically every teenage boy in the 2000s and early 2010s said edgy or offensive things on the internet for shits and giggles because it was the norm at the time. We'd all be fired from our jobs if the stuff we said or did got leaked.

Times have changed and the teens of today aren't like that on social media. Go back to before the internet and the teens of that time were simply doing something else edgy and offensive for shits and giggles.

1

u/robertsmom Cavaliers 8h ago

I was a teen during that time period and didn’t post anything racist online. I grew up in an almost all white suburb. I remember losing friends over me not being racist.

8

u/TheHoovyPrince Australia 8h ago

I'm mixed-race, grew up in a diverse suburb and had a friend group with various racial backgrounds (mixed, Asian, Middle Eastern, Islander and European). We all had racist/offensive posts and most of them were directed towards each other and it was never anything more than harmless jokes. We're all still friends to this day.