Trail Blazers Hire and Fire Broadcaster Braiden Bell on the Same Day, Then He Apologizes

The Portland Trail Blazers announced Braiden Bell as their new television play-by-play announcer on Thursday morning and fired him the same day, after a Portland reporter uncovered offensive tweets Bell wrote at age 15. Bell has now apologized, saying the posts were written 14 years ago and do not reflect who he is today, while the team has admitted its own hiring process failed, EssentiallySports reports.

What happened on the day Bell was hired and fired?

The appointment lasted hours. Portland named the 29-year-old as the replacement for longtime voice Kevin Calabro on Thursday, with team president Dewayne Hankins praising his energy and fit for the franchise’s next chapter, Sporting News reports.

Then KGW reporter Devon Haskins, who had found the old posts on the X account Bell still uses, asked the club for comment. By later on Thursday the team had reversed itself entirely: the posts were “in clear violation of team and league policies,” the statement said, “therefore, we will not be moving forward with this broadcaster,” Reuters via Field Level Media reports. Bell made his X account private and had not commented at that point.

What was in the posts that cost Bell the job?

They dated to late 2012 and early 2013, when Bell was a 15-year-old in high school. The posts used derogatory names for women and included an insult aimed at Asians in a tweet that also described Bell himself as not racist, Reuters via Field Level Media reports.

Two details have shaped the reaction since. The posts sat on the same account Bell uses professionally as an adult, which is how a local reporter found them within hours of the announcement. And KGW’s own search found no similar offensive posts from Bell’s adult years, EssentiallySports reports, which is why the debate has split between the team’s zero-tolerance line and the question of what a vetting process is supposed to catch. It played out like a flagrant foul review: the contact was years old, but the ruling was made on what the replay showed today.

What did Bell say in his apology?

He took ownership of the words and pointed at their age. “I am deeply sorry for the language that I used on Twitter,” Bell said in a statement on X, via EssentiallySports. “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.”

He added that he regretted the posts being his first impression on Rip City and apologised to anyone hurt by them. The apology is the reason this story is still moving days later: a same-day hire-and-fire is a one-day embarrassment, but a 29-year-old answering publicly for posts from age 15, against a team that has confessed its own failure, has kept the argument running through the preseason, in the same week the league’s new push-off emphasis produced its first call and broadcast voices explaining referee signals became part of the product Portland is now scrambling to staff.

What did the Trail Blazers admit about their hiring process?

That the failure was partly theirs. Alongside the zero-tolerance statement, the franchise said: “We did not meet our own bar in this process, and for that we apologize to Blazers fans and to Rip City,” Reuters via Field Level Media reports.

The context makes the admission sharper. Calabro, the voice since 2016, left in July after what Sporting News calls a derisory extension offer, so the search that produced Bell was already a sensitive one for the fanbase. Bell’s own path ran through Arizona State, Cal Baptist, the Phoenix Mercury and the Valley Suns, with an FS1 football debut last fall: a rising broadcaster, hired for the biggest job of his career and gone before he called a single game, closer to a 10-day contract that ended by lunch than to a normal appointment.

What happens next for Portland’s broadcast booth?

A second search, on a deadline. Portland opens the season at home against the Phoenix Suns on October 21, Field Level Media reports, and the play-by-play chair is the most public-facing job in the franchise outside the roster.

The team’s own statement promised the next broadcaster would reflect its values and that it would “do better.” Whether that means a veteran hire, an interim voice or a fuller public explanation of the vetting, the replacement announcement is the follow-up this story is waiting on, and it has to land within three weeks.