I thought we were done with this kind of stuff?
The Portland Trail Blazers announced yesterday that they had fired play-by-play announcer Braiden Bell – on the same day he was hired – after a local news station went all the way back to 2012 and discovered what they called “misogynistic” and “racist” tweets from Bell…who was 15 at the time.
The tweets were brought to the attention of the NBA team by KGW reporter Devon Haskins, who reached out to the team for comment after they announced that Bell would be replacing longtime play-by-play announcer Kevin Calabro.
In one tweet, Haskins said:
“I’m not racist at all.. But not gonna lie.. Asian people piss me off! Hahaha”
And some of the others read:
“Gotta give a shoutout to all the big girls out there and those closet whores.”
“We got a sl-t alert on aisle 10.”
“Girls these nights… Smh #ThirstyForTheD”
The news station admitted that all of the tweets were from when Bell was 15 years old, and that they weren’t able to find any offensive tweets from Bell after he became an adult. But apparently, they still decided to send the tweets from 14 years ago to the man’s employer, and it didn’t take long for the Trail Blazers to announce they had parted ways with Bell:
“The Portland Trail Blazers have zero tolerance for racist, sexist, or harmful comments. Social media posts made by our recently announced play-by-play broadcaster are in clear violation of team and league policies, as well as our values and expectations. Therefore, we will not be moving forward with this broadcaster.
The play-by-play role carries a long legacy of excellence, on the broadcast and in character, and we hold that standard without exception. We did not meet our own bar in this process, and for that we apologize to Blazers fans and to Rip City. We believe strongly 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.”
The reporters who sent the tweets to the team seemed particularly proud of their “investigative journalism” after getting the man fired from his job:
But many in the comments weren’t happy that they were trying to cancel a guy and cost him his career over things that he said when he was just 15 years old:
“You act like you blew the lid off some super-scoop. Modern journalism is a joke and you’re a perfect example.”
“Two random tweets when he was 15. Absolutely nothing since he became an actual adult. I don’t understand why you would go out of your way to get a young man fired early in his career for nothing. This just seems hateful and unnecessary nothing to be proud about.”
“So you guys were randomly checking his profile to try to find something to use against him? Why? This is insane. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“Unreal that you are proud of this”
And many others pointed out that the Trail Blazers currently have Ja Morant on their team, who has had his own legal troubles in the past, including a 2023 incident in which he flashed a gun in a strip club on Instagram live. Morant ultimately didn’t face any charges over the incident.
It’s pretty insane, not only that the team fired him over tweets he made while still in high school, but also that a news organization would go out of their way to search a guy’s background for what they deem “cancelable” tweets and send them to the guy’s employer. I thought we were finally getting over the whole cancel culture thing, but I guess I should have known better from a city like Portland.
