{"id":671124,"date":"2026-05-29T00:38:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T00:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/671124\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T00:38:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T00:38:13","slug":"with-the-return-of-the-fire-the-wnba-is-back-in-portland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/671124\/","title":{"rendered":"With the Return of the Fire, the WNBA Is Back in Portland"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Portland Fire forward Emily Engstler goes up for a shot during a road game against the Indiana Fever.<\/p>\n

The Portland Fire season opener was, by all measures other than the final score, lit. (The Fire fell to the visiting Chicago Sky 98\u201383.) The game, held earlier this month at the Moda Center, marked the return of the WNBA<\/a> to this city after a 24-year absence<\/a>. It featured pyrotechnics, a halftime performance by Ashanti, and a sold-out arena, nicknamed the Fire Pit. Deafening cheers soundtracked much of the game. Skylar Diggins, a 14-year WNBA veteran and point guard for the Sky, told reporters afterward that it was so loud that she missed a ref\u2019s whistle. With 19,335 seats sold, the game set the attendance record for an expansion team\u2019s home opener, and it was the second-largest crowd for a home opener in the 30-year history of the WNBA.<\/p>\n

It was impressive, though not exactly a surprise in a city famously supportive of women\u2019s sports.<\/a> What surprised me, as I scrolled clips online after the game, was my own quickening pulse. I\u2019ve never been much of a sports person. As a kid, I was bad at ball sports; I danced instead. As an adult, I\u2019ve been to one Thorns game, one Timbers game, and one Trail Blazers game. But watching these women slice and spin and shoot\u2014and hearing the crowd roar back at them? Suddenly, I found myself wanting in.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The season opener at the Moda Center featured a halftime performance by Ashanti, whose career was just reaching its peak when the Fire first played in Portland in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n

A couple of days later, I show up at the Moda Center for the Fire\u2019s second game of the season. Entering the arena feels like undergoing a gentle baptism. Smiling employees greet me as I mill among a multigenerational, mixed-gender crowd decked out in merch. Little kids and blue-hairs alike wear fat faux gold chains, the Fire logo\u2014a somewhat convoluted rose erupting in flames\u2014dangling across their chests ($29 at the team store). I buy a beer and ask the cashier how things have been so far. She practically swoons. \u201cSo nice,\u201d she says. She worked Fire games back in the early aughts, she tells me, and she\u2019s delighted to have the team back.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Fire are one of two expansion teams this season, along with the Toronto Tempo\u2014whom Portland beat on the road, 99\u201380, on May 23.<\/p>\n

After a pregame proposal (congrats to the happy couple<\/a>!), flames shoot from the backboards, and I feel the heat from my seat in the 200-level. Then the game\u2014tonight the Fire face the New York Liberty, winners of the 2024 league title\u2014is off. The first quarter passes in a blur. By the second, my eyes begin to adjust. By the third, I\u2019m rapt\u2014which isn\u2019t to say I always understand why a whistle blows. To my left, I hear my friend Megan, a former basketball player and season ticket holder, say things like \u201cin the lane,\u201d and it\u2019s clear I still have much to learn.<\/p>\n

But even a novice can tell it\u2019s a tight game. Each time the Liberty make a move, the Fire counter. With less than two minutes left, it\u2019s tied, 94\u201394. Everyone in the arena is on their feet. With 27 seconds left, it\u2019s tied again, 96\u201396. Fire forward Bridget Carleton takes a three and misses, but before the sigh can fully sweep the crowd, guard Sarah Ashlee Barker nabs the rebound and hits the layup, falling onto her back as the buzzer blares and the crowd explodes. Barker\u2019s teammates pile on top of her. Streamers shoot from the rafters. Megan throws an arm around me. \u201cI love sports!\u201d she squeals. I turn to the stranger to my right, and we put up our hands for a high five before going in for a hug instead. My body hums all the way home.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Guard Sarah Ashlee Barker, in her second season in the WNBA, scored a buzzer-beating layup that delivered the Fire their first win.<\/p>\n

That was two weeks ago. In the time since, I\u2019ve watched games from my couch and from the Sports Bra<\/a>, the bar on NE Broadway that shows exclusively women\u2019s matchups. I\u2019ve studied the schedule and made plans to attend games with friends, with my sister-in-law, with my mom. I\u2019ve downloaded the WNBA app, followed every Fire member on Instagram, and subscribed to a half-dozen new podcasts. I\u2019ve browsed Reddit threads about Fire head coach Alex Sarama, a 31-year-old Brit who last week drew attention<\/a> for having the team practice in socks. (Sarama says he took inspiration from a book by Wolfgang Sch\u00f6llhorn, a German sport scientist who researches biomechanics and motor learning.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Head coach Alex Sarama is a 31-year-old Brit with a distinctive system.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s hooked me? In part, it\u2019s that my rookie fandom feels welcome with a new team in town. In part, it\u2019s that games are fast and fun, and that something borderline primal runs through me when I watch these women chest-bump each other after making powerful plays. But this is also the WNBA\u2019s first season under a landmark collective bargaining agreement<\/a>. Signed after marathon negotiations in March, not two months before the season tipped off, it brought major (though still incomplete) gains. Thanks to resolute bargaining by the players\u2019 union, these athletes are finally making serious money. This season\u2019s minimum salary of $270,000 is more than last season\u2019s supermax. (Last season\u2019s minimum? $66,079.) The average is $600,000, and 31 players are making more than a million\u2014including Portland\u2019s Carleton, for whom the pay jump amounts to nearly a 1,000 percent raise.<\/p>\n

The union also negotiated the first comprehensive revenue-sharing model in women\u2019s professional sports, with players set to receive roughly 20 percent of gross revenue (from ticket sales, TV rights, merch, and so on). While that figure remains far from the near 50 percent share that NBA players receive, it\u2019s significant because it ties player compensation to league growth. And the WNBA is in a\u00a0boom era<\/a>, with a massive media rights deal, rapidly rising attendance, and skyrocketing team valuations. Turns out that watching athletes put their bodies on the line hits different when they\u2019re benefiting in big ways.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

With 15.3 points per game so far this season, forward Bridget Carleton is one of the Fire’s top scorers.<\/p>\n

Plus: While everyone expected Portland fans to show up for the reborn Fire, few thought the team would play all that well. In preseason rankings, nearly every outlet\u2014The Athletic<\/a>, ESPN<\/a>, the\u00a0WNBA<\/a> itself\u2014put the Fire at the bottom. But eight games into the season, the team has notched five wins, including two on the road. While the Fire lack an obvious superstar, the roster is stacked with high-energy players willing to put in the work. Last year, on the Minnesota Lynx, Carleton averaged only 6.5 points per game. So far this season, she\u2019s averaging 15.3. Forward Emily Engstler, a linchpin of the Fire\u2019s scrappy defense, is tied for the league lead in blocks per game. Carla Leite, a French player in her second WNBA season, is a spark plug, bringing speed and confident shooting; in Monday\u2019s game, again against the Liberty, the five-foot-nine guard hit a late-game three-pointer over two-time WNBA MVP (and six-foot-four) Breanna Stewart. She scored 18 points in that game and 20 in the next. Barker, also in her second season, has proven absolutely clutch off the bench. In addition to the buzzer-beater that delivered the Fire their first win, she made a game-sealing layup against the Connecticut Sun on May 18 and went on a fourth-quarter scoring run in Monday\u2019s Liberty game. “S-A-B” has already become a popular Moda Center chant.<\/p>\n

Even Cheryl Miller, one of the most decorated basketball players of all time, admitted she\u2019d been wrong about the Fire during a postgame broadcast on Monday. \u201cWhen I saw this roster in preseason, I\u2019m like, What in the heck are these kids gonna do? What\u2019s going to be their identity?\u201d the basketball legend said. But she\u2019d been convinced. \u201cTo see [Sarama\u2019s] vision in these last seven games, and this mindset of this Fire team\u2014whether they\u2019re 20 up, 20 down, they don\u2019t play the score. They just continue to grind it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The season remains early. The heat could hold. The flame could flicker. But I like it here in the Fire Pit. Consider me along for the grind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Portland Fire forward Emily Engstler goes up for a shot during a road game against the Indiana Fever.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-671124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671124","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=671124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}