The Portland Fire let a 16-point lead slip away before narrowly escaping the Seattle Storm, 84-82, on Friday night.<\/p>\n
The game did feature a standout performance from Holly Winterburn. In the four games leading up to Friday, the Oregon rookie averaged just four points per game. On Friday, Winterburn erupted for 18 points on 7-of-11 shooting in the first half, igniting the Fire\u2019s offense. She finished with a career-high 20 points and five assists.<\/p>\n
In the first quarter, Portland went on a 19-9 run to take a 26-19 lead at the end of the period. Winterburn, who came off the bench, scored 16 of Portland\u2019s 26 first-quarter points.<\/p>\n
Seattle cut the deficit to one possession in the second quarter, but the Fire closed the half on a 12-2 run to take a 48-36 lead into the break.<\/p>\n
The Storm then opened the second half on a 10-2 run, cutting Portland\u2019s lead to four points. Seattle never let Portland pull away, bringing the crowd to its feet in the final seconds as the game tightened to a one-point margin. A timely offensive rebound by Winterburn in the closing seconds helped give the Fire the advantage and seal the win.<\/p>\n
The Fire are five and a half games behind the final playoff spot after Dallas lost to Indiana, 98-87, on Friday evening.<\/p>\n
Next Up<\/p>\n
The Fire travel to Phoenix to take on the Mercury on Sunday at 4 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Portland Fire let a 16-point lead slip away before narrowly escaping the Seattle Storm, 84-82, on Friday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":814298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-814297","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\/814297","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=814297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}