October 2, 2026 · By The Sports Nus Staff · 3 min read
Braiden Bell was the voice of the Portland Trail Blazers for a few hours. The team announced the 29-year-old as its new television play-by-play broadcaster Thursday morning. By Thursday night, he was fired.
A reporter from Portland television station KGW dug through Bell's old X posts and found racist and misogynistic comments from 2012 and 2013, when Bell was about 15 years old. One post from December 2012 read, "I'm not racist at all.. But not gonna lie.. Asian people piss me off! Hahaha #Honest." Others used "slut" and a variant of the w-word to describe women. The Blazers announced the firing hours later, before Bell ever called a game.
The story in 60 seconds
- Morning: Portland names Bell, formerly the Phoenix Mercury's play-by-play voice and the G-League Valley Suns' voice, as its new TV play-by-play broadcaster.
- Afternoon: A KGW journalist surfaces the 2012-2013 posts, reaches out to the team for comment, and the Blazers act.
- Night: Bell is fired. Team statement: "The Portland Trail Blazers have zero tolerance for racist, sexist, or harmful comments," and "We did not meet our own bar in this process, and for that we apologize to Blazers fans and to Rip City."
- The hole he was filling: Bell was hired to replace Kevin Calabro, the team's voice for nine seasons, who left in this summer's layoffs under new owner Tom Dundon and signed with the Minnesota Timberwolves.
- The clock: Portland opens the season at home against Phoenix on October 21. Under three weeks to find a new voice for a broadcast team that was supposed to pair Bell with analyst Lamar Hurd and sideline reporter Brooke Olzendam.
The vetting failure is the real story
Set aside the debate about teenage tweets for a moment. The damning part for Portland is that a local TV reporter found this in an afternoon. The posts were public. Bell's account had not been scrubbed. The Blazers announced a hire, a journalist did a basic search, and the hire was gone before dinner. The team's own statement admits it: "We did not meet our own bar in this process."
This is a franchise under new ownership that already laid off veteran broadcasters this summer, including Calabro, and was rebuilding its entire TV operation. The first big hire of the new era lasted hours. That is the kind of organizational embarrassment that follows a front office.
And fair or not, the 15-versus-29 debate is coming. KGW noted that Bell's posts from 2015 onward were almost exclusively about sports, with nothing offensive as an adult. Portland's answer is that for the most public-facing non-player job in the organization, the standard is the standard: "The play-by-play role carries a long legacy of excellence, on the broadcast and in character, and we hold that standard without exception."
What happens now
Portland starts a broadcaster search with the season under three weeks out. The Blazers promised fans the next hire will reflect the team's values. Expect a safe, thoroughly vetted pick this time, and expect the team's social media scrubbing process to be considerably more serious than it was on Thursday.