The Portland Fire gear up for their inaugural WNBA season

Typically, new WNBA teams have five to six months to acquire players and practice as a team before the season starts. The Portland Fire have only five weeks.

With the WNBA expansion draft on April 3, the Fire were finally able to start building their team roster. The draft was delayed several months due to tense contract negotiations between the WNBA and the players’ union. The season is set to tip off May 9 at the Moda Center.

Kimberly Veale is the senior vice president of communications for the Portland Fire. She joins us to talk about the draft and the team’s upcoming season.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Typically, a new WNBA team has five or six months to acquire players and practice as a team before the season starts. The Portland Fire will only have about a month. The WNBA expansion draft was not held until this past Friday. It was delayed for several months because of contract negotiations between the league and the players’ union. Meanwhile, the first game of the season tips off May 9 at the Moda Center.

Kimberly Veale is a senior vice president of communications for the Portland Fire. She joins us now. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.

Kimberly Veale: Hi, yeah, thanks for having us. We’re excited.

Miller: What was it like for you in the months leading up to the deal between players and the league?

Veale: Obviously an exciting time for the WNBA. Where the deal netted out between the league and the players’ union certainly signals significant growth, momentum and excitement for the 26th season, and of course beyond. But for the Portland Fire, we didn’t have players on the roster. We were strictly focused on building this team, building the fandom.

There’s an interesting history here with the original Portland Fire that played three seasons from 2000 to 2002, and untold stories, moments to celebrate that legacy. But really a forward-facing modern era excitement and approach to building what fans can expect from this team, from a game experience perspective, the community and everything in between, starting here in about a month.

Miller: Did you ever fear, let yourself think that maybe the season wasn’t going to happen, that a deal couldn’t be reached?

Veale: Certainly a lot of speculation in the media. For me and the team that we were building here with the Fire, it was not something that we spent time on. It was negotiations that were outside of our control. Obviously, we want the best for this league, want the best for the players. But we have been very laser focused on building the best possible franchise and really have this ethos that we exist, this franchise exists because of the fans. So everything that we can do to generate excitement and to deliver the return of this team was our focus.

So the short answer is no. It was going to be what it was going to be in the end, and we were just focused on capitalizing and delivering experiences and moments to bring this team closer to the fan base in the interim.

Miller: I want to turn more squarely to the Fire in just a second, but this new collective bargaining agreement, it does mean that some players are going to get a million dollars a year. It’s nowhere close to some of the men, but it is something like a fourfold increase in salaries. What does this mean for the sport as a whole?

Veale: This moment is something that we’ve been working towards – myself in the WNBA and NBA family – for over a decade. Watching this league’s growth over the last 30 years … The league is obviously set to celebrate its 30th anniversary season this year. But when you think about the ABL and the leagues that came before the WNBA, and just from a societal perspective, what this means for the next generation [is] to understand that there is an equal playing field for boys and girls, women and men, to compete at the highest levels.

That’s something that this league has represented for its entirety. And as we continue to grow, build momentum, build investment, and understand who the audiences are of the WNBA and why they’re fans, we’re going to see a lot more from this league in the coming years. But it is certainly a major moment in time for the WNBA and for what this league represents.

Miller: Let’s turn to the expansion draft that just happened. It’s a little bit unusual for people who follow rookie drafts, given that new teams, you and one other, can select a limited number of players from existing teams. How does it work?

Veale: Our basketball front office, led by Vanja Černivec, our GM, they’ve had their hands full in preparation for this moment, and as you mentioned, free agency and the WNBA draft that are to follow here in the next couple weeks. But in short, there are 13 active WNBA teams in the 2025 season. They all had a chance to protect five players, and then…

Miller: Meaning, you can’t have these five players. The others, if you really want them, you can grab them.

Veale: Correct, there was a list of players that were left unprotected, therefore eligible for selection in the expansion draft. And then from there, of course, there’s a couple of nuances and different detailed rules, but in short, the available players were made known to us and to Toronto. We had a couple of days. Our basketball ops group was preparing, watching film, etc. once they knew that final list. And then on Friday there was an expansion draft. Portland had the opportunity to select first, overall, in the expansion draft. Of course we took Bridget Carleton from Minnesota.

We went back and forth with Toronto, two rounds in the draft, and then there was an available 24 players total, 24 spots where players could be taken, and there were, of course, a couple of passes. Each team ended up with 11 players in the end. So that’s the short version of it.

And then, of course, we have free agency coming up here in the next couple of days, followed by the WNBA draft where all 15 teams will have an opportunity to select athletes coming out of college or that are WNBA draft eligible from international play.

Miller: I’m particularly interested in the free agency piece for a second, because for years I have heard when people talk about the men’s team here, the Portland Trail Blazers, that it can be hard to sign big deal free agents because NBA players don’t necessarily want to play in what they see as a smaller city.

Is that the same, do you think, for a city like Portland that has already shown such excitement for the Fire and has shown a ton of interest in women’s professional sports in general? I guess I’m curious about how you see Portland as a draw for potential people to sign.

Veale: I obviously can’t speak to the Trail Blazers piece of this, but I think if you just isolate and look at the Portland Fire and obviously the Portland Thorns that have set the standard for tenured, passionate fandom in this city, that reputation is known globally. Even when you look at the audience and the fans that packed Moda Center for the original Portland Fire team in the early years, I think that that’s the expectation that we are carrying forward. There’s a responsibility here to deliver an incredible game experience.

Of course we’re building a competitive roster, but when you think about Portland and what it represents as a city that is going to unapologetically cheer for this team and back this team, there’s certainly a strong excitement and anticipation for what that means.

If you look at the Golden State Valkyries, where I actually was during the 2025 WNBA season, leading marketing and communications for the Valks, we had a similar question posed to us regularly. You’re an undefined expansion franchise. There was this assumption that you were not going to be competitive. And fast forward, you go through the expansion draft, you go through free agency, and players are getting a chance to play as the league has expanded. That means more roster spots. Players are getting a chance to play and compete, and here we go, the Valkyries made the playoffs last year.

Miller: Right. So if I’m not mistaken, the first time that a debut team made the playoffs.

Veale: Correct, yeah.

Miller: Well, what lessons did you learn last year from working for the Golden State Valkyries in their debut season that you think can be applied to Portland’s debut season?

Veale: The first one is it’s going to be chaotic and busy, very busy. You’re a startup, you’re building something from the ground up. I think one of the things that we figured out very quickly with Golden State is the fans and what they were demanding of the franchise, top to bottom. And how do you understand who the WNBA audience is in each market and globally, and deliver on what they want from the franchise?

So we’ve really tried to do that here with Portland. Obviously, it’s a different market. There’s cultural pieces and nuances to Portland that are critically important for us to be aware of and consider. There’s more opportunity here this time around to feed the fans opportunities to hear what they want from us and to take that into account as we build.

So, I think overarchingly, from the marketing lens, we’re really trying to understand what the fans want from us. Everything from music during games, on-court entertainment, opportunities pregame. Do you want to take photos, do you want to be in the bowl watching more behind the scenes content? Everything down to the nuts and bolts of the time that they leave their house and the time that they return home from a game. How they interact with us on social media. What content they want to see from the team. All of that is being built now as we understand customer behavior and what attracts our audiences.

Miller: What does it tell you that the Fire were able to sell something like 15,000 season tickets before the team existed? It was a logo, it was a brand, but there were no players when people were buying these season tickets.

Veale: Oh, absolutely. And similar story with the Valkyries. So that trend here in Portland was not shocking to me, but it really underscores the excitement for this league and what this league represents for the community. It’s not a bandwagon market, wins and losses. Of course everybody wants to win championships. That is certainly the goal. But in terms of how this team is going to impact the community, role models, accessibility.

There’s a resilience to the WNBA in terms of the rise of this league, and what has transpired over the last 30 years has not been easy. For this league to be where it’s at now is incredible and we certainly are on a very, very straight upward trajectory in terms of momentum. But when you think about what this represents for, like I said earlier, young girls and young boys, to understand that men and women can make millions of dollars playing basketball in the United States. That’s incredible. It gives you an opportunity to get a scholarship and to get an education.

So there’s all of these different trickle-down pieces, but at the core of what this league represents for the Black and Brown communities, for the minority communities, for the LGBTQ community, there’s certainly a really strong foundation for fighting for what these athletes believe in and how that impacts, for the better, the fans that that are behind the team.

Miller: You have just about a minute left, but how ready are you right now for May 9?

Veale: Thirty-three days. We’re counting down the days. We are going to use every available minute, where we really want to be proud of the product that we put on the court. Obviously basketball, and of course from the business side, for the show. But we’re excited. We’re expecting a full building. And we are not ready yet, but we will certainly be ready to meet the moment. We really want to make Portland proud with the return of this team.

Miller: Kimberly Veale, thanks very much.

Veale: Thank you.

Miller: Kimberly Veale is senior vice president of communications for Portland’s new – or returning – professional women’s basketball team, the WNBA Portland Fire.

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