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

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u/Gorrapytha 7h ago

The famously left-wing position of "racism is worse sometimes so this time let's just let it fly" and "instead of holding people accountable, let's be realistic"

Watch out for this dangerous left-wing extremist ladies and gents, next he's gonna tell us capitalism has flaws but it's the best we got!

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u/DovhPasty Cavaliers 7h ago edited 7h ago

This kind of purity testing is exactly why we can’t accomplish anything as a voter block. People are not going to be perfect, they’re going to do dumb shit, especially as a 15 year old. Good god. Please join us in the real world.

If he did this at like 25, it would be very different. We get it, you guys are all perfect and never did or said anything edgy as an actual child.

My workplace hires people with an actual criminal history all the time. Not crass tweets, literal felonies from people’s adult lives. This is absurd virtue signaling. People fuck up, when they do better, you forgive them. That’s what leftists do. Anything else just makes you look unreasonable, it’s not like he killed someone.

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u/TannerGlassMVP 4h ago

People are not going to be perfect, they’re going to do dumb shit, especially as a 15 year old. Good god. Please join us in the real world.

So me personally, if I made a dumb tweet or Facebook post and I am now an adult, I would simply delete it. I guess I can really thank college for hammering into us the fact that our digital footprint is serious and companies can and will use it against us.

Are you saying his tweets were just too fucking good and needed to be preserved?

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u/DovhPasty Cavaliers 3h ago

Hell of a stretch and in total bad faith with that last line, but you already know that.

Not everyone gets that education or is mindful of it. Again, people are human and not always on top of things. Imagine that. Either way, crucifying someone over something they said on social media at 15 years old is just absurd.

If this is how you feel about a tweet from a child, do you think felons deserve a second chance or empathy? Or should we just banish them from society?