Craig Carton calls out cancel culture after Portland Trail Blazers cut ties with newly hired announcer
By now, I’m sure you’re all aware of the situation regarding the Portland Trail Blazers firing their newly hired play-by-play announcer.
It’s a tale as old as time: someone lands their dream job, then an amateur internet sleuth with nothing better to do takes it upon themselves to ruin their life by digging up insensitive social media posts from over a decade ago.
Many sane people thought we had made it to the other side of “cancel culture,” but apparently that isn’t the case.
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Damian Lillard of the Milwaukee Bucks dribbles on the Portland Trail Blazers center court logo during the third quarter at Moda Center on Jan. 31, 2024, in Portland, Ore. (Getty Images)
Braiden Bell was all set to be the newest play-by-play guy for the Blazers, until a man by the name of Devon Haskins of KGW News in Portland unearthed several “racist and misogynist” tweets belonging to Bell from 2012 and 2013.
The tweets are, admittedly, in poor taste, but, to be fair, Bell was 14 years old at the time.
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OutKick’s Craig Carton weighed in on the situation, and was pretty charged up about what went down.
“This kid just got the job of his lifetime,” an incensed Carton explains. “And the first thing an ‘investigative reporter’ wants to do is see if (he) can find some dirt on the kid.”
Craig Carton speaks at Fox News Channel Studios in New York City on Sept. 4, 2025. (John Lamparski/Getty Images)
While he isn’t condoning what Bell posted, Carton is quick to point out that he was a teenager when he wrote this stuff, and that pretty much everyone has said something dumb or insensitive in their younger years.
“I’m not excusing what he wrote. I understand you finding it offensive, but he didn’t write it as a mature adult,” Carton says.
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“He wrote it as a 14 year old. Are we really going to make decisions now and not allowing people to get jobs? Because when they were in high school, they put out a tweet that their friends might have found funny, and now it’s going to impact this guy for the rest of his life.”
Carton is spot on.
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What does a guy like Haskins gain from digging up these Tweets from half a lifetime ago.
The only thing that comes of this is that some poor young man was robbed of his dream job for the (admittedly forgivable) sins he committed as a teenager.
A view of the center court logo before the Emirates NBA Cup game between the Portland Trail Blazers and the Minnesota Timberwolves at Moda Center in Portland, Ore., on Nov. 12, 2024. (Getty Images)
As a media man himself, Carton has one key piece of advice for anyone looking to make it big in broadcasting: scrub your social media page NOW.
“Before you apply for a job… clean out the Twitter account, clean out the Instagram,” he pleads. “Because you don’t even remember the dumb s–t you said and posted when you were a child.”
“And now Braiden Bell is learning this the hard way.”
