00:00Craig and I were just talking about this story, this poor kid, 29 years old, that just got
00:05the job of a career.
00:07I mean, job of a lifetime for anybody that's in sports media to be and was hired and became
00:15the youngest play-by-play announcer in NBA history for the Portland Trailblazers.
00:22Brayden Bell was the kid's name.
00:24He also replaced a legend in Kevin Calabro, who was there for millions of years doing
00:31it in Portland for the Blazers.
00:35And unfortunately, somebody dug up something he tweeted out as a 15-year-old and apparently
00:42caused him now to lose the job as the Portland Trailblazers hired him, and we haven't even
00:47started the season, and now fired him.
00:49So just awful stuff, Craig.
00:52And I'm thinking, thank goodness you and I grew up in a generation and, you know, the
00:59Gen X where we actually had to leave the house to go find a pay phone to talk to people.
01:04Like, we did not.
01:05We had beepers.
01:07We didn't have social media that we had to worry about.
01:11We didn't have that when we grew up.
01:13And thank goodness we didn't, Craig.
01:16Like, but it's just, I mean, a kid to be 29 and to get a job as a play-by
01:21-play guy in
01:22the NBA, it just goes, there's a lot of work and dedication that goes into that.
01:28And to think that's something he tweeted out as a 15-year-old snot-nosed teenager is now
01:34coming back to bite him.
01:36Just, it feels all sorts of unfair.
01:38It really does.
01:38Yeah, yeah, it's true if you think about it, that anything that was said in the world
01:45before about 1998 or 1999 cannot be found.
01:50It doesn't exist.
01:52It's nowhere.
01:52Nope.
01:53But anything with the internet, it's out there.
01:58It's somewhere to be found.
02:00It's kind of messed up.
02:01I mean, people don't understand.
02:03There's a generation, people don't understand what it's like driving around trying to find
02:06a pay phone.
02:06So, okay, like there's an entire generation that has no idea what that life was like.
02:13But what we didn't have, well, the reason we had to drive around, because there wasn't
02:17instant access.
02:19And I mean, in the broadcasting world, Greg, you know how hard it is to work your way up
02:25to get, you've been there from the trenches, man.
02:28I mean, you started in the trenches and understand how hard that is to think that's something you
02:34might have said or done at 15, which just blows it all up.
02:38I'm having a, I just have a hard time relating to that even being a question for anybody.
02:43Yeah.
02:44Yeah.
02:44So there's other, there's other elements involved here.
02:47I don't know this, this play by play guy in a, in a sense, do I feel like he was
02:53wronged?
02:53Of course, I think that if you, you know, have the scale, scale up and you're making
02:58me weigh the, weigh the decisions, I tip toward the Blazers making a poor decision there, but
03:04I don't tip it all the way.
03:05Like, and I'll, and I'll also say this, not to chastise or whatever, but I, if I, if I
03:13was him and I've been in the spot before, I've done it a couple of times, I'll go back
03:17in my old stuff and delete it.
03:19I've done that.
03:20I've already, I will tell you that I have done that.
03:22Now I, if I go back and I've checked my old stuff, I haven't said anything that would
03:28preclude me from getting a job in the future, Joe.
03:32But I would say that I probably made, you know, some poor decisions saying things that
03:38I had to go back and delete.
03:39I felt like, oof, like if this is something that somebody sees one day, I'll probably still
03:44okay.
03:44And it's not a big deal.
03:45Nothing like that, by the way, nothing like that.
03:47I didn't want to be clear on that.
03:48Nothing like that with, with race or anything like that.
03:50Uh, but, but I, but I've like, so a fan would say something to me and I would say something
03:55back to that fan, uh, you know, about the Marlins or even going back to the Gators or something
04:01else, an argument.
04:02Okay.
04:02And I think we all fall.
04:03I, I fell victim to it, but Joe, if I'm going after that Portland trailblazers job and I'm
04:09on the brink, either my agent, I don't have an agent, like, like he has an agent.
04:14I do have, uh, David Katz with me at all times.
04:17And he's the one that protects me for everything, but, but, uh, I would have him, uh, go through
04:21all my stuff or I would, uh, go through all my stuff before I'm applying for that job.
04:26So what, what's the reality, Joe, there's culpability, this kid, this, this, this young,
04:31this young man has some culpability because he could have, he could have scrubbed it.
04:36I think from his history.
04:38So now here's the other question that comes out with this, that we don't know if he scrubbed
04:43it and it still came out anyway.
04:46What does that say?
04:47Some people had it out for this guy, Joe, somebody, somebody had it out for him.
04:51He pissed somebody off over the course of his career and that person that he pissed
04:55off was waiting on this day to, to send this to the trailblazers and to send this out.
05:00Not unheard of.
05:01Also seen that stuff happen.
05:03People are terrible in this world.
05:05They'll wait until you're at the top to try to pull you down.
05:08There's a lot of different layers to it.
05:11So in the end, I think the trailblazers are, they've tipped the scales in terms of poor
05:18decision-making just overall, without a doubt.
05:22What somebody said when they're young, you know, mistakes are going to be made.
05:27And I'm sure that they could have just told this kid, hey, delete him and apologize and
05:30say, that wasn't me.
05:31And we could have, life could have probably went on.
05:33I have a feeling with this, but instead the blazers didn't even do the vetting.
05:37They didn't even look.
05:38And then they were alerted to it and did it.
05:40So they're the ones that I think should take probably the majority of the heat today, Joe.
05:44But I would say I've been in this spot in different jobs before.
05:48I go back and look at my stuff.
