Neil Everett spent years delivering breaking sports news to viewers. This week, the former SportsCenter anchor unexpectedly became the subject of it.
Everett says he learned that the Portland Trail Blazers were moving on from him by reading a Forbes article – not through a phone call, email or direct conversation with the organization.
“I read about it in Forbes,” Everett told Front Office Sports. He said he suspected changes were coming but apparently received no formal notice before the report was published.
Everett, a Portland native and longtime ESPN personality, had worked on Trail Blazers broadcasts since 2021. His departure is part of a much larger overhaul that also affected studio host Jamie Hudson, analyst Michael Holton and analytics contributor Tom Haberstroh. Veteran broadcasters Kevin Calabro and Travis Demers are also leaving their previous roles amid widespread changes to Portland’s television and radio operations.
The cuts arrive under the ownership group led by Tom Dundon, which has emphasized reducing expenses and streamlining the organization. The Blazers previously eliminated dozens of business-side positions, and their broadcast operation is now undergoing a similarly dramatic transformation.
Teams have every right to change their personnel, especially during an ownership transition. But allowing an established broadcaster to discover his dismissal through a media report is a remarkably impersonal way to handle the process.
Everett built a career telling audiences what happened. The Blazers apparently forgot to tell him.
