Portland announced a new play by play announcer on Thursday and dismissed him the same day, after a local reporter surfaced social media posts he had written years earlier.
What did the team say?
That it has no tolerance for racist, sexist or harmful comments and that the posts violated team and league policies as well as its own standards. The Trail Blazers broadcaster will not take the role. The team also apologised to supporters, said it had not met its own bar in the process and committed to doing better.
What was in the posts?
Racist comments directed at an ethnic group and a number of misogynistic remarks, as identified by a reporter at a Portland television station. They were reportedly written in 2012 and 2013, when the person was around 15 years old. He is now 29 and did not respond to requests for comment, nor did his representative.
Why not reproduce them?
Because they add nothing. Readers can assess a dismissal from the categories involved, and the specific wording of what a fifteen year old wrote in 2012 does not inform anyone’s judgment of the team’s decision. Repeating it attaches that material permanently to an adult who no longer holds the position.
What does the timing say?
That nobody looked. A local reporter found publicly posted material within hours of an announcement, which means a basic search was not performed before a public hiring. The team acknowledged exactly that. Vetting of this kind is routine in broadcast hiring precisely because social media archives are searchable by anyone.
How did the vacancy arise?
The previous announcer held the role from 2016 and left in July, describing the contract offer he received as substandard. The position has now been empty since then, with a replacement announced and withdrawn on the same day.
Is there a wider pattern?
The team’s new owner has made several cost cutting moves that have drawn scrutiny, and argued over the summer that public money alone should fund a $600 million renovation of the arena. A departure over contract terms and a hiring that skipped basic checks are separate events, though both concern how the organisation is being run.
Should conduct at 15 end a career?
Reasonable people differ, and the question is worth stating rather than assumed. One position holds that an employer representing a city publicly cannot ignore material of this kind regardless of age, particularly when a reporter can find it in an afternoon. Another holds that a decade and a half of intervening adulthood ought to count for something, and that the failure here was the team’s process rather than the individual’s past. Both have force.
What happens next?
The search restarts with the season approaching, and the Trail Blazers broadcaster role remains unfilled. Whoever is appointed will have been checked more thoroughly than the last one.
