Braiden Bell isn’t giving up, and neither is his attorney

Braiden Bell, hired and fired by the Trail Blazers as their TV play-by-play announcer last Thursday, is appealing to get the job back

Through his attorney, Braiden Bell has asked the Trail Blazers to reconsider his firing.

Through a statement to Front Office Sports, the Blazers have said sorry, but no.

That is not the end of the story.

“We are not going to go away,” Bell’s attorney, Arnie Herz, told me Tuesday by phone from his office in New York City.

By now, if you follow the local NBA team, you have heard about Bell’s racist and sexist tweets as a teenager in 2012.

Last Friday, Bell, now 29, was hired to be Kevin Calabro’s replacement to handle Portland’s TV play-by-play duties. Within hours, after a KGW-TV employee discovered Bell’s regrettable, juvenile social media posts and asked the Blazers for comment, he was history.

In a statement, the Blazers said they have “zero tolerance for racist, sexist or harmful comments.”

Bell’s attorney finds that hypocritical.

“Zero tolerance is inconsistent with the whole Trail Blazers organization,” Herz said. “There are few organizations that have less of a zero tolerance policy than the Blazers. They have tolerated players on their teams who have done far worse than what he has done.”

The man has a point. In the offseason, general manager Joe Cronin traded for the talented Ja Morant, whose disgraceful behavior caused the Memphis Grizzlies to give him away to Portland for a song.

Bell can’t complete a 360-degree-spin reverse layup, however. He can only call it.

Historically, during the notorious Bob Whitsitt “Jail Blazers” era, decorum was an unnecessary term. There was Ruben Patterson, signed to a free-agent contract months after he pleaded guilty to attempted third-degree rape by forcing his family’s nanny to perform oral sex on him. There was Rasheed Wallace, whose foul behavior resulted in 108 technicals through three seasons, including an NBA record 41 in 2000-01. And a whole lot of other stuff that was covered in a book you might have read.

So yeah, I get what Herz is saying. He believes a second chance is called for. Bell contacted him shortly after Blazer executive Corrine Cooley notified Bell that he was no longer employed by the organization.

Herz, a litigator for 31 years who started his own law firm in 2000, says he has plenty of experience acting on behalf of broadcasters.

“I have represented broadcasters in probably 250 (contract) agreements in my career, and for agencies,” he says. “I am a court-appointed mediator. I have been doing this for 25 years.”

In July, Herz represented Jacob Tobey, TV play-by-play man for the San Antonio Spurs, whose long-time girlfriend had accessed his Instagram account, exposing that he had cheated on her, which ended their relationship after six years. Tobey initially was let go by the Spurs after the affair spread on social media, but after he “sorted out issues” in his personal life, the club restored him to his broadcast position.

Soon after his dismissal by the Blazers, Bell issued an apology that read, “I’m deeply sorry for the language I used on Twitter. Those tweets, while wrong, were written when I was 15 years old and have no reflection on who I am today. I do not take lightly any harm it causes now.”

That resonated with Herz, who said Bell’s firing “seemed crazy to me, and to Braiden, and to a lot of people over comments that he made when he was a teenage boy. It was perplexing. I know the business pretty well. I thought, ‘Oh my God, the Blazers are out of their minds. For this?’ ”

Herz said he would have preferred to work things out privately with the Blazers.

“I almost always work behind the scenes,” he told me. “I find it is much more effective to get a goal, and everybody walks away with dignity, and nobody needs to know that lawyers are involved. I don’t think I have ever dealt with anything this tame.”

Herz left a voice message for Cooley.

Said Herz: “I said, ‘Before this blows up, please call me. Let’s resolve this. This is going to be bad for the Blazers, for the NBA, for the fans. This is not what we need right now.’ ”

Herz couldn’t help but add this: “No organization has done more to give second and third chances than the Blazers. The zero-tolerance part is not true, nor is it workable in your own organization. Get (Bell) back on. I have done this before. We’ll do a joint statement and be done with it.”

By Monday, Herz had no response. He left another voice message with greater urgency.

“You don’t have a play-by-play announcer,” Herz said. “I have a great one for you. It’s Braiden Bell. You can’t just terminate him under the contract. You can’t just walk away. We are not going to walk away. Have someone reach out to me. We are not going to do the press release. We don’t want to give more fuel to this. Discreetly, let’s walk it off, and we can come up with an easy way to get him back in.”

Herz said 15 minutes before a 24-hour deadline he had established, he received a “very friendly” call from Zandria Conyers, who serves as senior vice president and general counsel for the Blazers.

“She apologized for not getting back to me sooner,” Herz said. “She said she just wanted to give me a heads-up that the Blazers are not intending to reinstate (Bell). I said thank you.

Veteran attorney Arnie Herz, who is representing Bell, is attempting to negotiate with the Blazers — with so far, little success

“So I crafted a legal demand letter and a press release. We let the Blazers know we are serious, that they have to deal with it.”

On Tuesday morning, the Front Office Sports website asked the Blazers for comment on the situation.

“We stand by our statement issued last week and have no further comment at this time,” was the team’s response. “We wish Mr. Bell the best.”

It was not what Herz wanted to hear.

“There is an anatomy of every dispute,” he said. “It is not resolved if one or both of the parties hardens their position, and that is what (the Blazers) are doing. They are in the hardening-position phase right now. “But I think there is a reasonably good chance that someone within the organization with some power realizes that this is really silly of them, and that they should hire him back. I am still hopeful. Until they hire someone full-time, that door is open. I think they will come around.”

I think that is wishful thinking. The knee-jerk reaction to the revelation of Bell’s youthful indiscretions could have been avoided had the club done its due diligence in vetting the announcer’s past. I don’t expect them to budge. The powers-that-be may believe it is the right thing to do. Or perhaps they are worried about how a reversal would make them look.

Will Herz initiate legal action?

“It depends on what the Blazers do,” he said. “The goal is to get Braiden reinstated. If not, then it would be to get a fair settlement. If they say, ‘We’re not bringing him back, but we’ll honor the financial aspects of the contract,’ then we would have no legal action. We would resolve it.

“If they say, ‘He is terminated and we are not paying anything,’ that is not something I would advise my client to let go. But we don’t have to cross that bridge right now. I am very confident the Blazers will do right here.”

I don’t know Bell, nor am I familiar his work. After his 2019 graduation from Arizona State, he worked regularly calling games for his alma mater, for the WNBA Phoenix Mercury and for the G-League Suns. Did he comport himself well? Were there any complaints of racism or sexism during his time there? Any behavioral incidents? If so, we probably would have heard about it. But did the Blazers even ask?

“There is nobody within that organization who hasn’t done something wrong in their lives,” Herz said. “The only potentially perfect person they could get as a broadcaster would be Mother Teresa. Three problems: She is no longer alive, she knew nothing about basketball, and this wouldn’t be where she’d be putting her energies. Even the Dalai Lama has had some bad press around him.”

Through Herz, Bell proposed that if reinstated, he would participate in community and educational activities, “including outreach to the Asian-American and Pacific Islander community and to organizations that support women and girls in sports.”

That seems reasonable. The Blazers could put Bell through a probationary period, allowing him to prove himself as a respectful and respectable member of the community. There could be other hoops for him to go through.

“This is an opportunity for the Blazers, the NBA and the sports world in this country to pivot from being a ‘gotcha, tear-down culture,’ to building a bridge, taking responsibility, being accountable and getting a second chance,” Herz said. “It is a be-better approach as opposed to one-and-done.

“Braiden made some very bad comments and needs to take responsibility for that. He needs to learn and grow. We assume (Blazer executives) have good intentions. They want to have employees who are free of bias. We are looking for a positive situation where everybody advances here. That is the goal.”

I reached out to Dewayne Hankins, the Blazers’ president of business operations, for comment. He did not respond on Tuesday.

My guess is, an out-of-court settlement is in the offing. Given owner Tom Dundon’s tight grasp of the club’s coffers, Bell’s contract wouldn’t have broken the bank. The Blazers could then move on from their latest fiasco.

They then might choose to hire what a source says was their second choice — Kyle Draper, former TV play-by-play voice of the Sacramento Kings. Maybe they have someone else in mind. Or maybe they will surprise us and come around to affording Bell a second chance.

All we know is, the ball is in their court, before they go to court.

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