{"id":847579,"date":"2026-09-14T14:56:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T14:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/847579\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T14:56:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T14:56:16","slug":"the-evergreen-how-portlands-wnba-team-won-our-hearts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/847579\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Evergreen\u2019: How Portland\u2019s WNBA team won our hearts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/5H4NVKRY4ZDEJH34XYOPVOXV6U.jpg\" alt=\"Las Vegas Aces center A&#x2019;ja Wilson (22) attempts to rebound the ball at the same time as Portland Fire center Megan DiLeo (17) at the Moda Center in Portland, Ore., on July 9, 2026. DiLeo's corgi, Pancake, has become famous among Portland Fire fans.\" class=\" cursor__zoom-in\" style=\"aspect-ratio:3688 \/ 3501;width:100%\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"m-none m_bottom-mini\">Las Vegas Aces center A\u2019ja Wilson (22) attempts to rebound the ball at the same time as Portland Fire center Megan DiLeo (17) at the Moda Center in Portland, Ore., on July 9, 2026. DiLeo&#8217;s corgi, Pancake, has become famous among Portland Fire fans.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-body__image-by color_dgray f_s_xxs m-none\">Saj Sundaram \/ OPB<\/p>\n<p>Listen to audio from OPB journalists<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-body__text article-body--padding color_dgray m-none\">The rekindled Portland Fire are wrapping up their inaugural season and, while they didn\u2019t make the playoffs, they did finish fourth in the league for attendance. The team averaged more than 14,500 fans per game, which is not all that surprising given how much Portlanders <a href=\"https:\/\/www.opb.org\/article\/2026\/06\/22\/why-portland-is-at-the-heart-of-womens-sports-in-the-us\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">love to show up for women\u2019s sports<\/a>. Center <a href=\"https:\/\/www.opb.org\/article\/2026\/07\/16\/why-portland-fell-in-love-with-megan-gustafson\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Megan DiLeo<\/a> (formerly Megan Gustafson) described the team as \u201ca bunch of overlooked players,\u201d and said she never felt respected as an athlete until she came to the Rose City. Whether the team won or lost, every home game brought good vibes to the Moda Center, which the team nicknamed \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.opb.org\/article\/2026\/08\/10\/welcome-to-the-fire-pit-portland-embraces-its-reborn-wnba-team\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">The Fire Pit<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"article-body__text article-body--padding color_dgray m-none\">We break down the joys and challenges of the new team\u2019s first season with two lifelong women\u2019s basketball fans: OPB business reporter <a href=\"https:\/\/www.opb.org\/author\/kyra-buckley\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Kyra Buckley<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kmhd.org\/author\/rshortell\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Rev Shines<\/a>, host of \u201cToday\u2019s Good News\u201d on KMHD.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-body__text article-body--padding color_dgray m-none\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.opb.org\/shows\/evergreen-podcast\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Listen to all episodes of \u201cThe Evergreen\u201d podcast here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Las Vegas Aces center A\u2019ja Wilson (22) attempts to rebound the ball at the same time as Portland&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":847580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,358559,434],"class_list":["post-847579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-the-evergreen-podcast-portland-metro-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847579","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=847579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/847580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}