{"id":476736,"date":"2026-02-15T15:43:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T15:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/476736\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T15:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T15:43:08","slug":"she-built-the-portland-fire-once-before-and-knows-exactly-what-the-new-coach-is-up-against","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/476736\/","title":{"rendered":"She built the Portland Fire once before and knows exactly what the new coach is up against"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the Portland Fire<\/a> prepare for a return to the WNBA<\/a> in the 2026 season<\/a>, coach Alex Sarama<\/a> finds himself tasked with putting together a brand new team. <\/p>\n

But there is someone else who knows what it\u2019s like to try and build an expansion team from the ground up in Portland. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s tough being an expansion team,\u201d Linda Hargrove, the Portland Fire\u2019s coach and general manager for their original WNBA tenure, told The Oregonian\/OregonLive. <\/p>\n

Under Hargrove, the Fire went 37-59 over three seasons. And while Paul Allen pulled the plug on the franchise in 2002, the team was showing signs of promise going 16-16 in its final season. <\/p>\n

When looking back on building the team from scratch, Hargrove said the expansion draft can be a hard place to start. She said a lot of the players available (especially in years where there are multiple teams selecting) tend to be primarily bench players.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re getting, basically, players that aren\u2019t being protected. You know, like you\u2019re getting their 8, 9 or 10 player off of another team,\u201d Hargrove said. \u201cYou can get good players, but not premier players.\u201d<\/p>\n

And as expansion teams aren\u2019t added to the draft lottery (having not played the previous season), they aren\u2019t able to get high draft picks in their first year. The Fire\u2019s first pick in 2000 (the No. 7 pick, which is where the Fire are slotted again in 2026) was Lynn Pride out of Kansas. <\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until 2001, when the Fire had the No. 4 pick in the draft, that the team was able to bring in Jackie Stiles<\/a> \u2014 who would become Rookie of the Year and one of the standout players for the Fire for the following two years. <\/p>\n

So Hargrove said the best strategy for building a new expansion team is to attack free agency. It\u2019s where the Fire brought in some of the team\u2019s top players, like Sylvia Crawley<\/a>, Michelle Marciniak and Tully Bevilaqua<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey were players that maybe had been on teams or maybe on teams in the (American Basketball League<\/a>) but hadn\u2019t yet been picked up on a WNBA team, or weren\u2019t currently on a team,\u201d Hargrove said. <\/p>\n

\"LindaPortland Fire coach Linda Hargrove worked with the team as they prepared for the beginning of the debut 2000 season.LC- THE OREGONIAN<\/p>\n

Crawley would go on to hold the Fire\u2019s career record in points, rebounds and blocks. And 23 years after the original team disbanded, it was Crawley delivering the news to her former coach that the team was coming back. <\/p>\n

\u201cThen she called me again when they named it the Fire and she was so fired up about that,\u201d Hargrove said. <\/p>\n

Hargrove said the Fire were very involved in the community and the Portland fanbase<\/a> returned the favor. She said she was surprised it took so long for the WNBA to return to Portland. <\/p>\n

\u201cPortland showed for three years that they were a great partner in the league,\u201d Hargrove said. \u201cI was happy about it. I\u2019m sure there were a lot of people that were really happy about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the Fire disbanded, Hargrove started working for the Washington Mystics as a scout, assistant coach and eventually became the team\u2019s general manager. She retired from basketball in 2008 \u2014 later coming out of retirement to coach at Wichita State as an interim coach for a few months in 2017 \u2014 and now helps run ProHoops Sports & Events, which runs basketball camps and other events (like hosting neutral site preseason WNBA games) in Wichita, Kansas.<\/p>\n

Hargrove said she really enjoyed her time with the Fire and is hoping to come back to Portland to see the new team in action this year. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was probably one of the best three-year experiences that I\u2019ve had,\u201d Hargrove said. \u201cJust having the opportunity to put that team together and kind of start fresh, hiring everybody and then putting our team together and watching the improvement that we\u2019ve made over the three years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the Portland Fire prepare for a return to the WNBA in the 2026 season, coach Alex Sarama…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,167252,82,630],"class_list":["post-476736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-smith-berry-farms","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}