Earlier this week, the Portland Trail Blazers fired a newly hired game announcer for several old social media posts that appeared racial and misogynistic.
Potential play-by-play announcer Braiden Bell was dismissed Thursday after comments on his personal social media pages surfaced. Bell recently apologized after being let go from the Blazers.
“I am deeply sorry for the language that I used on Twitter,” Bell wrote in the post. “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. I regret this being my first impression to many of you online, but I can take solace in knowing that the people who truly know me understand that this is not the kind of person I am. Again, I’d like to apologize to anyone who was hurt by my words and will continue to always treat people with kindness and respect.”
Right-wing sports commentator Clay Travis gave his take Friday on his self-titled show regarding the situation, arguing that there should be a statute that protects children under 18 from being held accountable “for decisions they made when they were minors,” even on social media.
No person should be fired for social media posts from under the age of 18. Period. For any job in America. This should be a blanket rule. And people who try to turn these tweets into stories should be mercilessly ridiculed. pic.twitter.com/ltAv1EOZWc
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) October 3, 2026
“I can’t believe we are still doing this,” Travis said. “Point of argument: everybody out there that is young, scrub your old tweets. If you got on social media when you were 12, 13, 14, 15 years old, go back and delete everything you ever posted.”
Travis expressed his concerns, describing the reasoning for dismissal as “patently absurd.”
“Shouldn’t the same logic for juvenile criminal behavior apply when it comes to juvenile social media behavior?” Travis added. “If we believe you should wipe out the robbery of a convenience store from a 15-year-old’s record, why in the world shouldn’t we wipe out a stupid 15-year-old’s post and not hold the adult accountable for what the minor child did? Crimes are clearly far more significant than social media post.”
“We should establish a rule, and it should be simple: if you do something dumb before you are 18 years old, we don’t judge you as an adult based on that decision. Just like we don’t do it with the criminal system, we should not do it with social media for anyone, white, black asian or Hispanic. Let’s let kids make mistakes and not forever tar and feather them for it.”
The Trail Blazers released a statement via social media Thursday after removing Bell from his position.
“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.”
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