A young man named Braiden Bell had barely begun to inhabit his dream when the past reached forward and took it from him. Tweets written when he was fourteen — a child performing for an audience of peers — were unearthed by a journalist and handed to the Portland Trail Blazers, who responded by ending his employment before it truly began. The incident joins a long and growing record of our collective struggle to reconcile the permanence of digital memory with the ancient human understanding that people are not fixed things — that who we are at fourteen is not, and should not be, who we are fore
Carton blasts Blazers for firing announcer over decade-old teenage tweets
Braiden Bell lost his newly secured position as play-by-play announcer for the Portland Trail Blazers due to resurfaced juvenile social media posts.
A fourteen-year-old's mistakes shouldn't cost an adult his career
Mark
So Braiden Bell gets hired, then loses the job because of tweets from when he was a kid. Why did the Blazers move so fast to fire him?
Mimi
They were under pressure. Once the tweets surfaced publicly, keeping him became a liability. The organization decided the cost of defending him was higher than the cost of letting him go.
Luke
But we should note—we don't know exactly what the Blazers' internal reasoning was. We know they fired him after the tweets came out. The rest is inference.
Mark
And Carton's argument is basically that this is unfair because Bell was a minor when he posted them?
Mimi
Right. He's saying there's a difference between holding an adult accountable for what they say and holding someone accountable for what they said as a teenager. The brain isn't even fully formed at fourteen.
Luke
That's a fair point, but it's also worth asking: did the Blazers have a responsibility to vet their hire before announcing him? Or is that unfair to expect?
Mark
What about Haskins, the reporter who found the tweets? Was he doing legitimate journalism or just digging for dirt?
Mimi
That's the real tension. He found factual information about a public hire. Whether that information was relevant or proportionate—that's where people disagree.
Luke
And we don't know Haskins's intent. He might have thought it was important for the public to know. Or he might have been looking for a story. The source material doesn't tell us.
Mark
So what's the actual standard now? Can employers look at anything someone posted as a kid?
Mimi
That's what Carton is asking. And he's saying the answer shouldn't be yes—that there should be some statute of limitations on juvenile mistakes.
Luke
Though we should be clear: the Blazers made a business decision. They weren't required to keep him. The question is whether they should have.
Le Pouls
- A journalist's search through a new hire's digital past cost Braiden Bell the play-by-play announcing career he had spent years building toward.
- The speed of the Blazers' termination decision revealed how quickly institutional fear of public pressure can override any consideration of context or growth.
- Craig Carton stepped into the silence many felt but wouldn't speak, arguing that punishing adults for the crude humor of their adolescence is a standard no generation could survive intact.
- The incident has no clean resolution — Bell is out, the journalist has moved on, and the question of what juveniles owe the future remains unanswered.
- The most practical wisdom to emerge was also the most dispiriting: scrub your past before anyone else can, because the internet remembers what mercy might have let go.
A young man named Braiden Bell had barely begun to inhabit his dream when the past reached forward and took it from him. Tweets written when he was fourteen — a child performing for an audience of peers — were unearthed by a journalist and handed to the Portland Trail Blazers, who responded by ending his employment before it truly began. The incident joins a long and growing record of our collective struggle to reconcile the permanence of digital memory with the ancient human understanding that people are not fixed things — that who we are at fourteen is not, and should not be, who we are forever.
Braiden Bell had just secured the position he'd long worked toward — play-by-play announcer for the Portland Trail Blazers — when a KGW News reporter named Devon Haskins surfaced tweets Bell had written in 2012 and 2013. Bell was fourteen at the time. The posts were crude and juvenile, the kind of content a teenager might have shared for a laugh among friends. The Blazers terminated his contract within days.
Media personality Craig Carton watched the sequence unfold and said plainly what he believed many were thinking: the firing was wrong. Not because the tweets deserved defending, but because a decade-old mistake made by a minor should not determine what an adult is allowed to become. "Are we really going to make decisions and not allow people to get jobs because when they were in high school, they put out a tweet their friends might have found funny?" Carton asked. The question was pointed rather than rhetorical — because increasingly, the answer appeared to be yes.
What Haskins gained from the search was difficult to measure. He had done his job as he understood it. But the cost was concrete and fell entirely on Bell, whose opportunity in Portland was gone. Carton's parting advice to anyone entering a scrutinized profession was grimly practical: delete the old posts before you apply, because you may not even remember what you once thought was harmless.
The episode crystallized a tension that has been building for years — between the internet's perfect memory and the human capacity for growth. The Blazers answered the question of what institutions owe young people who said foolish things online before they understood permanence. Bell would have to find his answer somewhere else.
Braiden Bell had just landed the job he'd been working toward—play-by-play announcer for the Portland Trail Blazers. Then Devon Haskins, a reporter at Portland's KGW News, found tweets Bell had posted in 2012 and 2013. Bell was fourteen years old when he wrote them. The posts were crude, insensitive, the kind of thing a teenager might have thought was funny among friends. Within days, the Blazers terminated Bell's contract.
Craig Carton, a media personality at OutKick, watched this unfold and decided to say what he thought many people were thinking but afraid to voice: this was wrong. Not because the tweets were defensible—Carton made clear he wasn't excusing them—but because a fourteen-year-old's mistakes, dredged up a decade later by someone with time on their hands, should not cost an adult his career.
"This kid just got the job of his lifetime," Carton said, his frustration evident. "And the first thing an 'investigative reporter' wants to do is see if he can find some dirt on the kid." The framing matters here. Haskins wasn't investigating a sitting public official or a person in a position of power. He was digging into the digital past of a young man who had just been hired to call basketball games.
Carton's central argument was straightforward: people change. A fourteen-year-old's judgment is not a fourteen-year-old's destiny. "He wrote it as a 14 year old," Carton emphasized. "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?" The question hung there—not rhetorical exactly, but pointed. If the answer was yes, then the standard had shifted. Accountability for juvenile speech, preserved forever in the digital record, had become permanent.
What Haskins gained from the excavation was unclear. The reporter had done his job as he saw it—finding information that might be relevant to a public figure's hiring. But the collateral damage was concrete: Bell lost his position. The Blazers, facing public pressure, made a swift decision. The young announcer's dream, at least in Portland, evaporated.
Carton offered practical advice to anyone entering broadcasting or any field where a social media presence might be scrutinized: delete the old posts now. "Before you apply for a job, clean out the Twitter account, clean out the Instagram," he said. "Because you don't even remember the dumb stuff you said and posted when you were a child." It was a grim kind of wisdom—not about becoming a better person, but about erasing evidence that you were ever anything less than perfect.
The incident raised a question that had been simmering for years: what do we owe young people who said stupid things online before they fully understood the permanence of the internet? The Blazers' answer was nothing. Bell's answer, whatever it was, would have to be lived out somewhere else.
Citations marquantes
This kid just got the job of his lifetime. And the first thing an 'investigative reporter' wants to do is see if he can find some dirt on the kid.— Craig Carton
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?— Craig Carton
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