The Trail Blazers fired their new television play-by-play broadcaster, Braiden Bell, hours after they announced the hire, after posts on X resurfaced from Bell’s past that featured misogynistic and racist comments.
The objectionable social media posts were from 2012 and 2013, when Bell was roughly 15 years old, and contained comments about “Asian people” and used the terms “slut” and wh—s” to refer to women in the posts.
Bell is now 29 years old.
KGW in Portland reported that one of its journalists had spotted the posts and reached out to the Blazers for comment before the team announced it had fired Bell.
“The Portland Trail Blazers have zero tolerance for racist, sexist, or harmful comments,” the Blazers said in a statement. “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.”
As of late Thursday night, posts using the language remained on Bell’s X account when viewed by The Post.
Among the posts that the local news station found was one that mentioned disliking Asian people.
“I’m not racist at all.. But not gonna lie.. Asian people piss me off! Hahaha #Honest,” Bell wrote in a post on Dec. 9, 2012.
A post several weeks earlier read, “Gotta give a shoutout to all the big girls out there and those closet w—s.”
“We got a slut alert on aisle 10,” Bell wrote on Feb. 13, 2013, KGW noted in its report.
The report noted that it had not discovered any offensive posts from Bell when he was of adult age.
Bell had been hired to replace the long-time voice of the Trail Blazers, Kevin Calabro, who told The Oregonian that he was leaving his role after being given a “subprime” contract offer.
The Blazers had announced the hiring of Bell earlier in the day.
Bell graduated from Arizona State in 2019 and called games for Cal Baptist and then ASU on ESPN+ and later got a job doing play-by-play for the Suns’ G League team and then the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury.
Bell has not publicly commented on the firing.
