{"id":849361,"date":"2026-10-02T18:48:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T18:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/849361\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T18:48:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T18:48:15","slug":"portland-trail-blazers-fire-new-play-by-play-broadcaster-hours-after-hiring-announced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/849361\/","title":{"rendered":"Portland Trail Blazers fire new play-by-play broadcaster hours after hiring announced"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">PORTLAND, Ore. (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kptv.com\/2026\/10\/02\/trail-blazers-fire-new-play-by-play-broadcaster-hours-after-hiring-announced\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.kptv.com\/2026\/10\/02\/trail-blazers-fire-new-play-by-play-broadcaster-hours-after-hiring-announced\/\">KPTV<\/a>\/Gray News) &#8211; The Portland Trail Blazers have fired newly hired play-by-play broadcaster Braiden Bell.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">According to a statement from the team, Bell\u2019s termination stemmed from social media posts that violated team and league policies about racist, sexist and harmful comments.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThe Portland Trail Blazers have zero tolerance for racist, sexist or harmful comments,\u201d the team said <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/trailblazers\/status\/2105858217372951007\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/trailblazers\/status\/2105858217372951007\">with the announcement<\/a>. \u201cThe play-by-play role carries a long legacy of excellence &#8230; and we hold that standard without exception.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Bell had been announced as the team\u2019s new play-by-play announcer just hours before his firing. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cWe did not meet our own bar in this process, and for that we apologize to Blazers fans and Rip City,\u201d the team continued. \u201cWe will make sure that our new broadcaster reflects our values.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Bell graduated from Arizona State University, where he called games for the basketball team. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Before his brief stint with the Trail Blazers, Bell also called games for California Baptist University, as well as being the play-by-play announcer for the Phoenix Mercury and working games in the NBA G League. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The 2026-27 NBA regular season begins on Oct. 20, with preseason games starting this weekend. <\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 KPTV via Gray Local Media, Inc. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORTLAND, Ore. (KPTV\/Gray News) &#8211; The Portland Trail Blazers have fired newly hired play-by-play broadcaster Braiden Bell. According&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":849362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3784],"tags":[7,601,100268,100274,100277,100269,100278,6,100272,100273,100271,687,471,100270,3967,1617,100276,100275],"class_list":["post-849361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-portland-trail-blazers","tag-basketball","tag-blazers","tag-braiden-bell","tag-braiden-bell-announcer-fired","tag-braiden-bell-arizona","tag-braiden-bell-portland-trail-blazers","tag-braiden-bell-social-media-posts","tag-nba","tag-new-nba-play-by-play-broadcaster","tag-new-nba-play-by-play-broadcaster-fired-hours-after-hire","tag-new-play-by-play-broadcaster-fired","tag-portland","tag-portland-trail-blazers","tag-portland-trail-blazers-fire-new-play-by-play-broadcaster","tag-portlandtrailblazers","tag-trail-blazers","tag-why-was-braiden-bell-fired-from-portland-trail-blazers","tag-why-was-braiden-bell-fired"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/849362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}