Ian Eagle On His Legendary Calls, Finding The Funny, and Allergies at Augusta

Um, all right, so there was a massive, massive story online in the sports broadcasting world, uh, that took place, and I, I was asked from a ton of people my thoughts on the situation.

For those of you who are online, you, you probably know what I'm talking about.

Uh, it revolves around the hiring of Braden Bell, a young broadcaster.

I think he's around my age, maybe a year or two younger.

Uh, he was hired last week as the voice, the TV voice, of the Portland Trail Blazers.

Incredibly impressive to get a job as a NBA voice in your 20s.

I mean, that's very rare.

M- We had my buddy Drew Carter on here.

He's in his 20s.

I think the guy with the Spurs, Jacob Toby, who he initially was let go, but they're bringing him back.

They, they figured out that situation.

I think those two guys might be the only two g- young guys who are the NBA voice of a team in their 20s.

And for a moment last week, Braden Bell was going to join that group.

Uh, and then it turns out later that day, the Portland Trail Blazers fire him because of old tweets that crossed the line.

Okay, there are a few ways to look at it, and I think all of the following can be true.

A, the Portland Trail Blazers did not do enough research if this was really going to be a make or break issue.

If you're hiring someone to be the voice of your team and represent your team, you would think all of this would be done beforehand so that if you feel this is the right decision to not have him represent the team, you're not publicly embarrassing him for something he did when he was 15 years old.

That part is absolutely ridiculous.

Now, there's a small part of me, and who knows, this could help Braden Bell in the long term if you wanna be glass half full for, for his side, because now he's a name, and a lot of people would know him now because of this that's become national sports news versus if he was just doing Portland Trail Blazers games, um, without causing any waves.

And I know none of this was his intention, um, but I, I think the way the Portland Trail Blazers handled this was absolutely ridiculous and unfair.

And by their kind of thinking- There are middle schoolers and high schoolers out there who don't know any better, better, and if they're tweeting something inappropriate right now, the fact that it could cost them in 15 to 20 years, that's, that's a scary thought because we, we've all done things we regret.

I guarantee you everybody listening to this, myself included, has things that we deleted.

Um, with that being said, Braden Bell probably should have dug through his own accounts and deleted everything before he entered this process.

Um, because, you know, there are weird, crazy people out there for some reason with the cancel culture, they're just gonna come for you and try to take you down.

Why? I don't know.