Natasha Howard and the Minnesota Lynx dropped 107 points against the Fire earlier this week. NBAE via Getty Images<\/p>\n Such an enormous defensive rating often points to a multifaceted issue. In Portland\u2019s case, there are red flags everywhere! The Fire haven\u2019t been able to keep opposing teams out of transition, allowing a league-high 13.1 fast break points per game<\/a> in June, and their inability to finish defensive possessions with a rebound has led to 16.3 second-chance points per game<\/a> for opponents.<\/p>\n Worse still, the Fire have committed a turnover<\/a> on 20.8 percent of their own possessions during their current slide. That\u2019s an offensive issue, yes, but when a team can\u2019t take care of the basketball, it also puts undue pressure on its transition defense\u2014something that the Fire can ill-afford.<\/p>\n If there\u2019s a point to be taken from all of this, it\u2019s that the Fire simply aren\u2019t giving themselves a chance to compete on defense. It\u2019s true that their center rotation of Megan Gustafson and Luisa Geisels\u00f6der isn\u2019t going to deter many shots around the rim, and they don\u2019t have many perimeter players who cut their teeth on defense, either, but that also makes it all the more important that Portland cover for its defensive weaknesses in the halfcourt by minimizing the number of opportunities opponents have to exploit them. No matter the context, offensive rebounds and fast breaks tend to yield high-efficiency shots, and right now the Fire are giving up far too many.<\/p>\n The Fire can help themselves out with better offense<\/p>\n The obvious solution? Portland needs to play better offensively to take some of the pressure off its defense.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not exactly deep-dive analysis, but when a team is struggling so mightily to defend, sometimes focusing on what it can control elsewhere can help. Obviously, ranking near the bottom of the WNBA in defensive rebounding and turnover rate would be bad for anyone, but given the Fire\u2019s struggles to defend in the halfcourt, cleaning things up on the glass and in transition would go an especially long way.<\/p>\n Portland improving their own scoring efficiency would help, too. For some teams, high-scoring games are inevitable, whether it\u2019s due to pace of play or their own offensive talent. Take the Fire\u2019s fellow expansion team, the Toronto Tempo, for example. They, too, rank near the bottom of the WNBA in defensive efficiency, but have still been able to hover around .500 thanks to their high-octane backcourt.<\/p>\n Carla Leite\u2019s ability to get into the paint is one of the few individual strengths the Fire can rely on. Getty Images<\/p>\n Portland doesn\u2019t have that kind of firepower, but there are still avenues for improvement. Guards like Bridget Carleton, Carla Leite and Sarah Ashlee Barker are having career years, and while the Fire\u2019s roster isn\u2019t built to win barn-burners\u2014they\u2019re currently playing at the second-slowest pace<\/a> in the WNBA, averaging 78.68 possessions per 40 minutes\u2014it\u2019s generally harder for opponents to get their own offense going if they\u2019re pulling the ball out from the net more often.<\/p>\n Granted, most of this will be easier said than done. It\u2019s very possible that the Fire\u2019s early-season success was nothing more than a mirage and that they just won\u2019t be able to hang around for a full 44-game schedule.<\/p>\n For an expansion team, the only way to go is up, and Portland\u2019s recent slide shows that there\u2019s still plenty for them to work on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Portland Fire began the 2026 season as one of the WNBA\u2019s most pleasant surprises. One of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-715927","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\/715927","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=715927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Natasha](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/gettyimages-2281199367.jpg\"\/)
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Carla](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/gettyimages-2281524497.jpg\"\/)
<\/a><\/p>\n