When Ohemaa Nyanin was scouring the women’s basketball community in search of her first hire as general manager of the Golden State Valkyries, one name kept popping up over and over again.
And every time someone mentioned Černivec’s name, it included the same refrain.
“Everybody that you talk to about her has a positive story they kind of leave you with,” Nyanin said. “What she’s done, how she’s done it, where she’s done it. It was the same with everybody, everywhere. It was overwhelmingly positive, and the breadth of that was super important to me. The first thing I told my ownership group, our operations people — and anybody who would listen — is that Vanja Černivec is the person that I want to build with.”
Thirteen months later, Nyanin will have to continue her build with someone else.
The Portland Fire introduced Černivec as their first general manager during a news conference Tuesday morning at the Moda Center, touting her passion for women’s sports, her deep and diverse knowledge of women’s basketball and her track record for building successful teams. But it was her experience working as an assistant under Nyanin at Golden State, which has not yet completed its first season in the WNBA, that cemented her front office candidacy with the expansion Fire.
The Valkyries, who boast a 19-18 record and sit in seventh place in the WNBA standings, are in the thick of the most successful expansion season in league history. With seven games and roughly two weeks remaining, they are on the verge of becoming the first expansion team to make the playoffs. And Černivec has been instrumental to the success, building the roster — and culture — alongside Nyanin from scratch.
“She’s very inclusive … she’s very collaborative and she has a great ability to care,” Nyanin said. “She will allow space for others to operate and showcase their strengths, such that everyone feels empowered to make whatever decision that they need to make. But she also will have an analytical view, a critical eye, and she’ll want to push the envelope in all kinds of categories and never want to take no for an answer. I’m really glad that she’s been given an opportunity, and I expect nothing but the best.”
After a rocky introduction to the WNBA — the Fire waited seven months to hire their first president, then let her go after less than three months on the job — the franchise seems to finally have found its footing. Interim President Clare Hamill hinted Tuesday that she’s poised to remove her interim tag, saying she was “in it for the long haul” as she flashed a new tattoo of the Fire’s logo on her forearm. The organization has secured more than 13,000 season-ticket deposits. And it’s in the middle of “phase one,” Hamill said, of building a new practice facility in Hillsboro, where it will share space with the Portland Thorns.
But the hiring of Černivec is the next, and perhaps most important, step for a nascent franchise that sits roughly nine months away from the first game of its inaugural season. The 43-year-old from Slovenia is not only tasked with building a roster, hiring a basketball operations staff, creating an analytics department and hiring a coach, but also with establishing the foundation for a winning and positive culture in a city that loves both basketball and women’s sports.
What kind of style will the Fire play? What kind of basketball abilities will she look for in a player? What kind of roster does she aspire to build?
Černivec said she wouldn’t — or rather, couldn’t — answer those questions until she hires a coach and a staff and they craft a shared vision. But she did say that one thing above all else would guide her moves as a first-time WNBA general manager.
“When I evaluate talent, I first look at the character of the person, who they are as a person, and I stick to that,” Černivec said. “No matter how good of a player they are, if they’re not a good teammate, if (they) won’t come in a work hard, they’re off my list. And then it all has to align with the head coach we’re going to have. What’s the strategy and the vision he or she will have on the court? And the front office needs to make sure to kind of align with the vision. So for me to sit here today and tell you what that’s going to be like, I would lie to you. I don’t have that answer yet.”
She did have answers, however, to questions about her scouting philosophy and what she will look for in the Fire’s first coach.
Černivec said she values analytics in scouting, but is mostly “eyeball-driven” based on what she sees a player do on the court, a philosophy that was shaped during her many years coaching in Europe, where a lack of resources limited the use of analytics. She has more than 12 years of professional basketball operations experience, mostly overseas. She spent two seasons as GM of the London Lions of Super League Basketball — helping the team win back-to-back Women’s British Basketball League Championships and its first FIBA EuroCup Women’s title — and also spent six years working internationally for the NBA, which included a two-year stint as the Chicago Bulls’ international scout. She was the first female to hold the position.
It was during that two-year stint with the Bulls, from 2020-22, when she first delved into analytics.
“I definitely now look at both sides, but it’s always like … what are your weaknesses?” she said. “I feel like eye test never fails and it’s all about the volume of basketball you’ve seen. And I’ve been lucky enough to travel all around the world, so just seeing basketball in different continents, different levels of competition, I think that kind of is my biggest strength.”
Her vast knowledge of international basketball was certainly a strength at Golden State. Seven of the 11 players selected by the Valkyries in last year’s expansion draft hailed from foreign countries. And of the 19 players who have seen action for Golden State this season, 10 were born outside the United States.
“I think my advantage is that I’ve spent years in in Europe,” she said. “We have highly competitive leagues in Euroleague, EuroBasket, French League, Spanish League, Turkish League. All the best talent plays there. So just having that volume of games and knowing the players and the coaches, I think, it’s hugely beneficial. I know the teams here are catching up as well. A lot of teams have scouts now in Europe. I feel like coming from there, just having a relationship with players and coaches, it’s probably an advantage that we’re going to have.”
But the first order of business if finding a coach, Černivec said, and there apparently is no shortage of interested parties. Since she was named Portland’s general manager, her phone has been “blowing up with people raising their hands” to interview for the job.
“I’m definitely looking for someone that’s going to be a strong leader with a huge basketball IQ and will empower players to make decisions on their own,” Černivec said. “I’m looking for someone that will build an environment where players will be encouraged to be problem-solvers, not a coach who will try to give all the solutions to players.”
The Fire are one of two expansion franchises, along with the Toronto Tempo, joining the WNBA in 2026, and their first games are expected to be played in May. So Černivec has a lot of work to do in a small amount of time.
Her job in Portland doesn’t officially start until Sept. 15, which will give her time to complete her first season in Golden State and take part in a playoff run she helped facilitate.
But at the same time, Černivec said, she will shift her focus to the Fire and the myriad tasks that lay ahead. Thirteen months after helping steer an expansion franchise from the beginning, she’s doing it all over again, only this time in the driver’s seat.
“I can speak for everybody when I say, when we all met Vanja, we knew she was exactly right for this big vision in Portland,” Hamill said. “We are getting somebody that knows basketball, that’s excited to come to Portland, and I know you’ll all be just as excited as I am as you get to know her.”
— Joe Freeman is a senior writer at The Oregonian/OregonLive covering the Trail Blazers and NBA. Reach him at 503-294-5183, jfreeman@oregonian.com, @BlazerFreeman or @freemanjoe.bsky.social. Our journalism needs your support. Subscribe today to OregonLive.com.