{"id":235090,"date":"2025-10-19T00:06:21","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T00:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/235090\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T00:06:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T00:06:21","slug":"portlands-first-wnba-head-coach-is-30-british-and-just-might-change-basketball-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/235090\/","title":{"rendered":"Portland\u2019s first WNBA head coach is 30, British and just might change basketball forever"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week, Portland Fire<\/a> general manager Vanja Cernivec had a pretty good idea how people might react when she announced the WNBA expansion franchise\u2019s first head coach.<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably we\u2019re going to look a little crazy at the start,\u201d she told The Oregonian\/OregonLive. \u201cI\u2019m ready for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She was talking about hiring a 30-year-old British disciple of a training method known as the constraints-led approach. A guy who has never coached in the WNBA, to boot. <\/p>\n

But after the team prematurely announced it had hired Cleveland Cavaliers\u2019 assistant Alex Sarama on Tuesday<\/a>, deleted the post from LinkedIn, and a source told The Oregonian\/OregonLive that the negotiations had hit a roadblock, it was less clear that Sarama would, in fact, get the job.<\/p>\n

On Friday, the Fire introduced Sarama<\/a> as the expansion franchise\u2019s first head coach. <\/p>\n

For real this time.<\/p>\n

Sarama described the job as \u201can incredible opportunity to build something from the ground up.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cJust being able to set the tone, set the culture from Day 1, that is so unique,\u201d he told The Oregonian\/OregonLive on an interview via video conference. \u201cI think the vision of ownership, the vision of Vanja and then you combine that with a franchise who is willing to go all in with the evidence-based methods and everything I\u2019ve been living my whole life for the last eight years, that\u2019s just an incredible opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Cernivec and Sarama spoke to The Oregonian\/OregonLive this week under embargo, a common practice when teams and companies want to roll out a major announcement.<\/p>\n

Last year, the Cavaliers won an Eastern Conference-best 64 games while leading the NBA in points per game and offensive rating.<\/p>\n

\"AlexAlex Sarama, 30, saw the opportunity to become the Portland Fire’s first coach was unique as he can build the team from the ground up.Courtesy of Portland Fire<\/p>\n

Sarama will continue to work with the Cavs while filling out his staff with the Fire, they said, and will transition fully to Portland before the WNBA\u2019s expansion draft, which remains unscheduled due to uncertainty around the league\u2019s collective bargaining agreement with players.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an unexpected jump. Sarama is leaving his position as a key assistant on an NBA team with legitimate championship aspirations to take on a head role with a team with no track record in a league he hasn\u2019t coached in.<\/p>\n

But he has significant history and a shared philosophy with Cernivec.<\/p>\n

They worked together on the NBA\u2019s programs abroad and later with the London Lions, where Cernivec was the general manager and Sarama was the team\u2019s director of methodology.<\/p>\n

While Sarama is coming from the NBA and much of his experience is in the men\u2019s game, he said he helped start one of the top junior girls\u2019 clubs in the United Kingdom, the Guildford Goldhawks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was my whole start with coaching,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t actually think there\u2019s much on Google about this.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also coached girls\u2019 camps for Basketball Without Borders in Africa.<\/p>\n

His previous head coaching experience was with a men\u2019s elite junior academy in Italy from 2020-23.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though I haven\u2019t coached (women) on the professional side,\u201d Sarama said, \u201cI think I\u2019m very well prepared for this job and can\u2019t wait to start.<\/p>\n

The core of Sarama\u2019s philosophy is CLA, which he described as \u201can evidence-based framework.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sarama is not just an adherent to CLA, which has slowly grown in popularity in the NBA. He literally wrote the book on it: \u201cTransforming Basketball: Changing how we think about basketball performance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Numerous stars train using CLA individually while some teams, including Sarama\u2019s Cavs and the Memphis Grizzlies, worked it into their entire program. It can be seen by organizations that use the method, Cernivec said, as a secret weapon. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just how you practice, but it\u2019s how you go about the weight room,\u201d Sarama said. \u201cIt\u2019s how you go about a (doctor) using return-to-play to get a player back from an injury. It\u2019s even things like how you use film in the video room. So it\u2019s an all-encompassing framework that I think when you apply in all these areas, it gives you a very unique competitive advantage. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I really believe it\u2019s the future of sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sarama does not consider himself a player development coach and, in fact, rejects the term entirely.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s too siloed,\u201d he said. \u201cFor me to be an effective basketball coach, that requires a knowledge of offensive and defensive schemes, player development, the weight room, analytics. This to me is the future of the modern-day coach.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the Cavaliers, head coach Kenny Atkinson empowered Sarama to design and run practices and, Sarama said, he is responsible for drawing up the team\u2019s out of bounds plays \u2014 considered to be among the more tactical aspects of coaching.<\/p>\n

While CLA has grown in visibility, it is still not widely used at the team level in the NBA and no WNBA has built their entire operation around the concept.<\/p>\n

Asked how league observers would respond to the outside-the-box hire, Cernivec laughed and said, \u201cI would say, \u2018Vanja\u2019s a little bit insane.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

The basic idea of CLA is to replace the traditional rote, repetitive drill-based learning with more game-like scenarios that make players more instinctive. It personalizes training to age, height, skill, strengths, weaknesses, and on and on, all different \u201cconstraints.\u201d <\/p>\n

The simplest explanation?<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a kid, you learn your native language, you\u2019re just thrown into the chaos,\u201d Cernivec said. \u201cYou just learn as you grow and your parents talk to you. Versus when you try to learn your second language and the school tells you, first read the alphabet and learn all the letters. Then you\u2019re going to add the vocabulary, then the grammar. And now we\u2019re going to put everything together.\u201d<\/p>\n

In essence, she said, it\u2019s the difference between immersion language program and classroom learning.<\/p>\n

Cernivec, who is from Slovenia, became a disciple of the method when she suffered a torn ACL and opted against surgery and instead trained using CLA. <\/p>\n

\u201cHaving this chaotic learning will help you learn much faster,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

So that was, perhaps, the clever genius behind tabbing Sarama for the job. Which sits in contrast to the clunky rollout with Tuesday\u2019s misfire.<\/p>\n

The frustrating thing for the Fire is that they had largely seemed to be outgrowing their growing pains. Cernivec is widely respected throughout the sport and, like Sarama, has worked on multiple continents and in numerous leagues.<\/p>\n

She is one of multiple hires the Fire have made from the Golden State Valkyries, which have been credited for raising the bar for what an expansion team can do.<\/p>\n

So there is every reason to give Cernivec the benefit of the doubt in making her first coaching hire.<\/p>\n

This was not a strategy that she suddenly adopted.<\/p>\n

CLA was at the center of her pitch to the Fire when, while still an assistant GM with the expansion Golden State Valkyries, she applied for the job with a team that has said it wants to be on the cutting-edge of the sport.<\/p>\n

Cernivec said on Monday that leaning on CLA would give the Fire a competitive advantage in recruiting if players believe their system can help extend their careers. And while other teams can hire coaches or development specialists who preach the ideals of CLA, the Fire have the advantage of being an expansion team building from the ground up.<\/p>\n

With Sarama, she said, the Fire wouldn\u2019t be trying to reinvent something, they are trying to invent something entirely new.<\/p>\n

So while others across the sport wondered if Cernivec might target a seasoned WNBA leader like Sandy Brondello, who led the New York Liberty to a championship last year and was seen as a possible recruiting link to former Oregon Duck Sabrina Ionescu, Cernivec had other plans.<\/p>\n

Two seasons ago, Sarama worked as an assistant coach with the Portland Trail Blazers\u2019 G League affiliate, the Rip City Remix in their inaugural campaign.<\/p>\n

Last year, he joined Atkinson\u2019s staff in Cleveland as director player development for what became the Eastern Conference\u2019s No. 1 seed. He was promoted to assistant coach in July.<\/p>\n

Atkinson became a CLA convert and in his first year with the Cavs won the NBA\u2019s Coach of the Year honor.<\/p>\n

It is not unusual for NBA coaches to transition to the WNBA. This year\u2019s finals featured two head coaches who spent many years as NBA assistants: Las Vegas Aces\u2019 coach Becky Hammon and the Phoenix Mercury\u2019s Nate Tibbetts, who worked for the Trail Blazers from 2013 to 2021.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve worked in so many places around the world,\u201d Sarama said. \u201cI watch a lot of basketball … You name it, I\u2019ve seen it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sarama said he is also looking to soak up offensive and defensive principles from games around the globe.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think fans will be able to look forward to something that isn\u2019t generic copy-paste, but something very, very intentional. And I can\u2019t wait to see that brought to life and just, really, this culture of joy I want to create around the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

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