Shakeup at top of Portland’s WNBA franchise raises serious questions about expansion team’s future | Bill Oram

Maybe the Fire is the right name for Portland’s WNBA expansion team after all.

How else to describe the five-alarm chaos that is unfolding before the franchise has even announced a color scheme?

Less than three weeks before the expected launch of an official brand identity, the franchise, which is supposed to start play in 10 months, is now without its top executive.

Employee No. 1 is out.

Sources told The Oregonian/OregonLive that President Inky Son, who was hired at the beginning of April, has been fired, leaving the franchise without a leader in its most prominent and visible role.

“As a matter of company policy, we don’t comment on personnel matters,” RAJ Sports said in a statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive.

The stunning exit comes after what sources had described as significant “growing pains” amid a “rocky” rollout for the expansion team.

Son did not respond to either voice or text messages left on her cell phone Thursday evening. A spokesperson for the WNBA did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Examples of teams reversing course on such a key position so soon after making the hire are hard to find, and might be unprecedented in circumstances such as these: An expansion team so near showtime.

Son’s sudden ouster raises significant questions about Portland’s WNBA launch which has already been seen as far behind schedule. Only in recent weeks had the team begun hiring support staff and the franchise remains without a general manager to make basketball decisions.

By contrast, the Toronto Tempo, which was announced as an expansion team four months before Portland, hired general manager Monica Wright Rogers in February and announced its brand identity close to 18 months before basketballs would start bouncing.

Some sources expressed hope that the franchise’s stumble will serve as a wake-up call to siblings Lisa Bhathal Merage and Alex Bhathal about the stakes of building a WNBA franchise in Portland and what it will take to do so successfully.

While the team has not yet shared publicly its plans for a team name, the WNBA last week filed several trademarks for the “Portland Fire,” in an apparent bid to resurrect the branding of the WNBA team that previously played in Portland from 2000-02 and in its brief tenure attracted a loyal following.

The franchise has hinted that it plans to launch its brand identity on July 15, but there was no immediate indication Son’s departure was related to the brand launch.

On Thursday, the team declared triumphantly that it had secured 10,000 season ticket deposits for the team’s inaugural season, when Portland and Toronto will become the 14th and 15th teams in a league that has exploded in both popularity and value.

In a statement heralding that news, Mike Whitehead, RAJ Sports’ managing director, said, “This extraordinary level of community engagement goes beyond casual interest, it further cements Portland’s position as the global epicenter of women’s sports.”

The statement also included a comment from Bhathal Merage. It notably did not include any mention of, or comment from, Son, who joined the expansion franchise after eight years as an executive with the NBA Players Association.

Bhathal Merage and her brother, Alex, are based in Southern California and, sources said, have primarily visited Portland for launch events, such as the groundbreaking of a joint women’s sports facility in Hillsboro last month, and for Portland Thorns’ games.

Multiple sources raised concerns of turbulence with the expansion team getting off the ground, pointing to a lack of connection between ownership and the city of Portland as well as women’s basketball.

While the Bhathal siblings own a minority stake of the Sacramento Kings, they were inexperienced in women’s sports before purchasing the Thorns of the NWSL in early 2024 from Merritt Paulson for $63 million.

The opportunity to claim the WNBA’s 15th team fell into their laps shortly thereafter, following the collapse of an expansion bid from a year earlier that had fallen apart in the 11th hour when ZoomInfo founder Kirk Brown backed out as the team’s owner.

The WNBA awarded the Portland and the Bhathals the team last September.

That followed a grassroots effort, led in part by U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, who in 2023 hosted a forum to woo Commissioner Cathy Englebert at northeast Portland’s first of its kind all-women’s sports bar, The Sports Bra.

In his role, Whitehead oversees both the operations of the Thorns and the WNBA franchise. People wary of the trajectory of Portland’s launch expressed concern about Whitehead’s lack of experience in women’s sports and the fact that he remains based in Sacramento, where he previously worked for the NBA’s Kings, and has not relocated to Portland.

In a statement announcing Son’s hire in April, Whitehead described the Georgetown University graduate as someone who would “lay the groundwork for future growth.”

Son was born in Korea and immigrated to the United States, telling one interviewer that she was unable to speak English when she arrived in the country at the age of 8. She made a compelling figure atop the team’s organizational chart.

“We are confident her leadership will drive the franchise to new heights,” Whitehead said in a statement, “creating a lasting impact both in Portland and across the WNBA.”

Before arriving in Portland, Son was the chief administrative officer with the NBPA and held prior roles with the association before that. Her first job in sports was with the Major League Baseball Players’ Association starting in 2015 and before that she had a career in fashion.

“We are thrilled to welcome Inky to our team,” Bhathal Merage said in a statement in April. “Inky’s proven track record of transforming organizations, her strategic mindset, and her passion for our mission make her the ideal person to build a solid foundation for our franchise and reaffirm Portland as the global epicenter of women’s sports.”

Now they are looking for her replacement.

— Bill Oram is the sports columnist at The Oregonian/OregonLive.

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