The Portland Trail Blazers hired a play-by-play voice at midday and erased him before dinner. Braiden Bell lasted roughly eight hours as the new face of Rip City Television, and the only thing that moved faster than the announcement was the walk-back. That is franchise negligence wearing a values press release.
Bell is 29. The posts that sank him came from 2012 and 2013, when he was about 15. KGW’s Devon Haskins found them still sitting on an active account Thursday evening. One from December 9, 2012: “I’m not racist at all.. But not gonna lie.. Asian people piss me off! Hahaha #Honest.” Another from November 30, 2012 gave a “shoutout to all the big girls out there and those closet w–res.” February 2013 brought “We got a sl-t alert on aisle 10” and “Girls these nights… Smh. #ThirstyForTheD.” KGW reported no offensive material once Bell became an adult. From 2015 on, the feed ran sports. That timeline does not clean the teenage garbage. It also does not explain how a team handed him the microphone without reading it.
The Hire Collapsed Before the Background Check Did
Earlier Thursday the Blazers were selling chemistry. Team sources told The Oregonian Bell “really stood out,” that he and color man Lamar Hurd “had great chemistry,” and that he understood “Portland’s connection to the Blazers, the history of the franchise and how impassioned our fans are.” Dewayne Hankins, president of business operations, called him “a great fit for where we’re headed and an important voice for the next chapter of Trail Blazers basketball.” By nightfall the same organization posted a full retreat: “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.”
I read that second paragraph and the real confession sits right there. “We did not meet our own bar in this process, and for that we apologize to Blazers fans and to Rip City.” Correct. They did not meet it. A local reporter did the basic scroll the franchise skipped. Bell’s account was still public when the story broke. Private after. No statement from Bell has surfaced. His agent pointed people to the team, then went quiet.
The tweets are indefensible. A 15-year-old writing that stuff is a kid performing cruelty for likes. A 29-year-old broadcaster inheriting that archive is a grown professional who never scrubbed the evidence or prepared for the day someone would. Both truths sit on the table. The Blazers only acted on the second one after KGW forced the issue.
Dundon’s Broadcast Gut Job Keeps Finding New Ways to Fail
This sits inside a larger mess. Kevin Calabro spent nine seasons calling games in Portland after 22 years with the SuperSonics. His deal expired June 30. He got what he called a “subprime” offer and walked, saying it was “an easy decision: not worth my time.” New owner Tom Dundon took control in March and already cut around 70 employees in May. The television side was getting rebuilt from scratch. Bell had real credits: Phoenix Mercury play-by-play, the G League Valley Suns, Arizona State, California Baptist. On paper he looked like the young voice for a reset. On a still-public 2011 account he looked like a liability nobody opened.
I keep a running ledger of front-office self-owns, and this one has a special flavor. You do not get to posture about “long legacy of excellence, on the broadcast and in character” eight hours after you announced the guy. You get to admit your process was a sieve. The season opens October 21 at home against the Suns. That is less than three weeks to find a permanent voice, sell chemistry with Hurd and Brooke Olzendam, and convince Rip City the next name will survive a basic archive search.
The zero-tolerance line is the easy part. Every team has one. The hard part is the part they already confessed: they did not clear their own bar before putting Bell’s name on the graphic. Teenage poison from 2012 and 2013 deserved daylight. An NBA franchise that needed a local TV reporter to find it deserved the embarrassment that followed. Portland still needs a play-by-play voice. What it needed Thursday was a vetting department that works before the press release, not after the apology.
