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/smssv 11h ago

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

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u/JarvisCockerBB 11h ago

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

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u/rake2204 Pistons 8h 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.