Blazers fire play-by-play broadcaster for racist, misogynistic comments made as a teenager hours after hiring him

The Portland Trail Blazers introduced and fired their new play-by-play announcer in the span of a few hours on Thursday, due to social media posts he made as a teenager.

Braiden Bell was announced as the team's new broadcaster Thursday morning. He had previously spent two seasons with the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury as well as various jobs in the college ranks.

Blazers president of business operations Dewayne Hankins was quoted in a release as saying Bell was "a great fit for where we're headed and an important voice for the next chapter of Trail Blazers basketball." The team also teased an appearance by the new hire at their upcoming Fan Fest this weekend.

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All of those announcements were taken down by the end of the night, with the Blazers releasing a statement saying they have zero tolerance for "racist, sexist or harmful comments" and that Bell, referred to only as "our recently announced play-by-play broadcaster" had violated that policy.

The Blazers said they were not moving forward with Bell and apologized to their fans.

The full statement:

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.

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.

The comments in question appear to be tweets from 2012 and 2013, when Bell would have been in high school. The tweets included statements such as "Asian people piss me off" and "we got a sl** alert on aisle 10."

Bell's X account was made private at some point Thursday. It is unclear what the Blazers will do with the play-by-play spot with preseason set to begin Wednesday and the regular season on Oct. 21.

The matter of the Blazers' play-by-play announcer was already a source of some embarrassment for the team. That job was only open due to the departure of longtime broadcaster Kevin Calabro, who said he left after receiving a "subprime" offer for his new contract with the team.

That line was a clear shot at new Blazers owner Tom Dundon, who built his wealth primarily through subprime loans in the auto lending industry. Dundon began his tenure with a series of cost-cutting measures that included laying off around 70 employees.