Braiden Bell got the biggest job of his career and lost it before the end of the day.
The Portland Trail Blazers named Bell their television play-by-play announcer and terminated him hours later, after racist and misogynistic posts from 2012 and 2013 resurfaced online.
The Team Statement Was One Line
“The Portland Trail Blazers have zero tolerance for racist, sexist, or harmful comments,” the team said.
KGW’s Devon Haskins reportedly surfaced the posts. Chris Haynes also reported the firing. The Associated Press described them as racist; KGW characterized them as misogynistic and racist.
The posts date from 2012 and 2013, when Bell was a teenager. His exact age at the time has not been reported, and the specific content has not been published in full.
The Vetting Failure Is the Story
Here is what should bother Portland more than the posts themselves. A reporter at a local television station found this material within hours of the announcement. The team had weeks or months to run the same search and did not.
Broadcast hires get background checks. Social media archaeology on a decade-old account is the easiest part of that process, and it is now standard practice at every organization that has watched this exact scenario play out a dozen times.
Portland either did not look or looked and decided it was fine. Neither answer is good.
The Chair Portland Needs to Fill
Bell was hired to replace Kevin Calabro, who held the role for nine seasons. Bell previously broadcast for the Phoenix Mercury.
Replacing a nine-year voice is already a difficult hire. Doing it twice in one week, with training camp underway and the season opening this month, is a scramble. The booth is vacant again and no replacement plan has been announced.
The Hard Question
There is a legitimate debate about whether posts written by a teenager in 2012 should end a career in 2026. People change, and a 14-year-old on the internet is not the same person as an adult professional.
That debate is a separate matter from what happened here. Portland made a judgment about whether it wanted to spend its season answering questions about its announcer, and decided it did not. That is a business calculation, and the team is entitled to make it.
What Portland is not entitled to is sympathy for a problem it created by not doing the most basic diligence on a public-facing hire.
Bell has not responded publicly. The exact hire and termination timestamps have not been confirmed, and reporting on the date varies between Oct. 1 and Oct. 2.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
