{"id":400190,"date":"2026-01-11T01:16:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T01:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/400190\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T01:16:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T01:16:06","slug":"by-the-numbers-10-facts-about-the-portland-fires-run-from-2000-2002","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/400190\/","title":{"rendered":"By the numbers: 10 facts about the Portland Fire\u2019s run from 2000-2002"},"content":{"rendered":"

The WNBA\u2019s<\/a> newest team is set to take to the court in 2026. <\/p>\n

And while there are still many unknowns when it comes to the new Portland Fire<\/a>, there is also a lot of time to learn some historical information about the previous iteration of the team. <\/p>\n

Here are 10 facts about the 2000-2002 Portland Fire, the city\u2019s last WNBA franchise: <\/p>\n

3: The previous iteration of the Portland Fire existed for the 2000, 2001 and 2002 seasons. The Fire are tied with the Miami Sol as the shortest-lived WNBA franchises of all time (not including the Golden State Valkyries who started operation in 2025). <\/p>\n

0: In three seasons, the Portland Fire compiled a 37-59 record and never managed to make the playoffs. The closest Portland got was in 2002, finishing with a 16-16 record and fifth in the Western Conference (one game behind Seattle for the final playoff spot). <\/p>\n

80%: The Fire\u2019s all-time record left a lot to be desired. But there was one team that hated to see Portland coming: the Washington Mystics. The Fire won four of their five games against the Mystics (80% of the contests), including a 75-58 victory on July 9, 2000 where Sophia Witherspoon dropped 26 points. <\/p>\n

935: The Portland Fire\u2019s all-time leading scorer is Sylvia Crawley, with 935 career points. After the team folded, Crawley spent one year with the San Antonio Silver Stars before moving to coaching full time. Crawley was also an assistant coach for North Carolina (her alma mater) from 2000-2002, even while playing for the Fire. <\/p>\n

5: Only 20 players suited up for the Portland Fire in their three-year lifespan. Of those players, five were there for all three seasons: Alisa Burras (taken first by the Fire in the 2000 WNBA expansion draft), Crawley (the team\u2019s all-time scoring leader), Stacey Thomas (all-time steals leader), Tully Bevilaqua (all-time assists leader) and DeMya Walker (the team\u2019s top scorer in 2002). <\/p>\n

40.6%: Jackie Stiles was one of the true standout players for the Portland Fire, turning into one of the WNBA\u2019s top three-point shooters during her injury-shortened career. Playing in Portland for the 2001 and 2002 seasons, Stiles made 40.6% of her three-pointers and averaged 11.4 points per game. She is still No. 12 in the WNBA\u2019s all-time three-point percentage leaderboard. <\/p>\n

1: Of the Portland Fire\u2019s 20 all-time players, only one has extra ties to The Beaver State. While Jenny Mowe is originally from Mission Viejo, California, she spent her high school years at Oregon\u2019s Powers High School and led the Cruisers to the Class 1A state championship. She then played college basketball for the Oregon Ducks. Mowe played for the Fire in 2001 and 2002, then spent a year with the Los Angeles Sparks. <\/p>\n

55.6%: The reignition of the Seattle-Portland rivalry will be hotly anticipated. The two cities have a long history together, including the long-running rivalry between the Trail Blazers<\/a> and the former Seattle SuperSonics in the NBA, the Timbers<\/a> and the Sounders in MLS, and the Thorns<\/a> and Reign in the NWSL. The Fire and the Storm were both introduced to the WNBA in 2000, and over the course of three years the Fire hold a 5-4 series lead. <\/p>\n

21: Despite that 2000 was the Fire\u2019s worst year (going 10-22), it was also when the Fire posted their most lopsided victory. On July 30, 2000, Portland bested the Orlando Miracle 76-55 in a game where the Fire recorded 14 steals and Witherspoon scored 27 points. <\/p>\n

2: Of all of the Portland Fire\u2019s 20 all-time players, two of them had careers spanning deep into the rest of the 2000s. Walker played until 2012 with the Sacramento Monarchs, the Connecticut Sun, the Washington Mystics and the New York Liberty. Bevilaqua played until 2012 for the Seattle Storm, Indiana Fever and the San Antonio Silver Stars.<\/p>\n

In fact, Portland Fire assistant coach Sylvia Fowles<\/a> (then with the Chicago Sky) played against Walker nine times and Bevilaqua 11 times. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The WNBA\u2019s newest team is set to take to the court in 2026. And while there are still…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[178125,99,434],"class_list":{"0":"post-400190","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-smith-berry-farms","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}