Sports broadcaster Braiden Bell is not giving up after he was hired and then fired within hours of being announced as the new TV play-by-play voice of the Portland Trail Blazers last week.
Bell’s new NBA job was quickly terminated last Friday after KGW reporter Devon Haskins located tweets on Bell’s Twitter (X) account that included racist and misogynistic language; the tweets in question were from 2012 and 2013, when Bell would have been 15 or 16 years old.
Bell has now hired an attorney and is asking the Portland Trail Blazers to reinstate him as the team’s play-by-play announcer.
Bell’s attorney, Arnie Herz, released a statement on Monday to address his client’s employment status.
Herz also called for the online backlash against Haskins, the local Portland reporter who discovered the offensive tweets on Bell’s Twitter account, to stop.
The statement from Bell’s attorney can be seen below:
Should the worst words a fifteen-year-old ever wrote decide the rest of his life? That is the question now before the Portland Trail Blazers. Last week the team hired Braiden Bell, 29, as its new television play-by-play announcer. On October 1, days before his tenure was to begin and before he called a single game, the team ended the relationship after a reporter surfaced social media posts Mr. Bell wrote between November 2012 and February 2013, when he was fifteen years old.
Mr. Bell has not defended those posts. He acknowledged them immediately and apologized publicly on October 2: “I am deeply sorry for the language that I used on Twitter. These tweets, while wrong, were written by me 14 years ago while I was only 15 years old and have no reflection of who I am today. I do not take lightly any harm it causes now.”
Today, through counsel, Mr. Bell asked the Blazers to reconsider and reinstate him. “Braiden is not asking anyone to excuse what he wrote,” said Arnie Herz, counsel to Mr. Bell. “He has owned it, without excuses. What he is asking is whether a boy’s words from fourteen years ago should outweigh everything the man has done since. If that is the standard, there is hardly a person in any organization in America who could meet it. Accountability means owning what you did and showing who you have become. Braiden has done both.”
Few franchises in professional sports have shown more faith in people’s capacity to grow than the Portland Trail Blazers, and that tradition is part of what makes Rip City special. Mr. Bell is asking only to be included in it. He shares the organization’s stated commitment that everyone who is part of Rip City should feel welcome and safe, and he has proposed working alongside the team in community and educational programming, including outreach to the Asian American and Pacific Islander community and to organizations that support women and girls in sports. “The Blazers have a chance to show what accountability and redemption look like together,” Herz said. “We believe this organization, more than any other, can do that.”
Mr. Bell’s situation is not unique. Across sports, media and business, people are losing livelihoods over things they said or wrote as children, surfaced years later and judged by adult standards without regard to age, time or growth. Mr. Bell and his counsel are asking the NBA to lead the conversation toward a fairer approach, one that asks four questions before ending a career: How old was the person? How long ago was it? What does the adult record show? Has the person taken genuine responsibility? “Zero tolerance sounds strong, but applied to childhood it becomes a standard no one can meet and no one actually believes in,” Herz said. “The NBA has led on social issues before. It can lead here, from moral absolutism toward a culture of accountability, compassion and understanding.”
Mr. Bell also asks that the backlash now directed at Devon Haskins, the KGW reporter who first reported the posts, and John Tierney, the KGW news director, come to an end. Mr. Bell holds no Ill will toward Messrs. Haskins and Tierney, and he does not believe anyone should lose a job over this. He invites Messrs. Haskins and Tierney to join a broader conversation about how journalists, teams and fans should weigh words written in childhood. “If we are asking for grace for Braiden, we have to extend it to everyone,” Herz said.
“I love this game, I love this city, and I am grateful to every fan who has reached out over the past few days,” said Mr. Bell. “I will keep working every day to be someone Rip City can be proud of whatever happens next.”
Mr. Bell will have no further comment at this time. Media inquiries should be directed to his counsel.
Among the tweets from Bell’s account published by KGW included derogatory sentiments toward Asian people.
“I’m not racist at all.. But not gonna lie.. Asian people piss me off! Hahaha #Honest,” Bell wrote in a Dec. 9, 2012 tweet.
Several other tweets on Bell’s account featured insensitive comments about women.
“Gotta give a shoutout to all the big girls out there and those closet wh-res,” Bell wrote on Nov. 30, 2012.
“We got a sl-t alert on aisle 10,” he wrote on Feb. 13, 2013.
“Girls these nights… Smh. #ThirstyForTheD,” he wrote on Feb. 24, 2013.
After being informed of his past posts by the media outlet, the Trail Blazers decided to fire Bell; he was set to replace Kevin Calabro following his 10 years as Portland’s play-by-play voice.
Prior to accepting the job with the Blazers, Bell had called games for Cal Baptist and his alma mater Arizona State on the ESPN+ platform. He also spent time as the play-by-play man for the Phoenix Suns G League team and the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury.
When reached for comment about Bell’s request for reinstatement, it did not appear that the Blazers are currently willing to change their minds about his firing, per The Athletic.
“We stand by our statement issued last week and have no further comment at this time,” the Blazers said in a statement. “We wish Mr. Bell the best.”
Bell’s attorney successfully assisted a different TV broadcaster, San Antonio Spurs play-by-play man Jacob Tobey, get his job back earlier this year. Before his eventual reinstatement, Tobey was reportedly fired by San Antonio after a woman allegedly hacked his personal Instagram account and made allegations that he cheated on her with the sister of former Spurs player Lindy Waters III.
