Portland Fire General Manager Vanja Černivec laughs during a press conference after the Women’s National Basketball Association expansion draft, determining the debut roster for the new Portland Fire and Toronto Tempo teams, at the Hyatt Regency at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Ore., on April 3, 2026.
Eli Imadali / OPB
With the start of the WNBA season rapidly approaching, Oregon’s new team will complete another vital step towards its historic march to tip off: pick rookie players via the annual college draft.
On Monday night the Portland Fire, along with the other 14 teams in the WNBA, will select the top talent from U.S. colleges and international leagues to compete for spots on their rosters. The WNBA is often considered the most challenging professional league to make a team, due to the limited number of spots and the growing base of talent, both in the U.S. and internationally.
Typically, WNBA teams have around a dozen players, making for a total of 180 roster spots in the 2026 season, most of which are already filled by veterans. However, the two expansion teams joining the league this year, the Fire and Toronto Tempo, are especially hungry for young talent.
The rekindled Portland Fire will have the opportunity to pick 7th, 14th, and 31st in Monday night’s draft. The WNBA will announce picks at a special televised event in New York; the Fire will hold a party at the Moda Center to watch the draft live on Monday.
The television special starts at 4 p.m. Pacific Time on ESPN when WNBA Commissioner Cathy Englebert is set to announce the number one draft pick. That choice belongs to the Dallas Wings. After that, Minnesota, Seattle, Washington DC, Chicago and Toronto are scheduled to make their selections ahead of Portland.
Past WNBA drafts have included top picks from Oregon schools, including in 2020, when three of the top 10 picks were from the University of Oregon. That’s not the case this year. Top prospects include Lauren Betts, who just won a national title with UCLA, Olivia Miles from Texas Christian University, and Azzi Fudd from perennial women’s basketball powerhouse University of Connecticut.
Earlier this month, the brand-new Fire and Tempo also selected 11 experienced players each in the expansion draft. Portland picked forward Bridget Carleton from the Minnesota Lynx with its first pick.
Portland Fire general manager Vanja Černivec told reporters at the time she was proud of the picks in the expansion draft and expects the same from the college draft.
“The NCAA draft is just gonna be a cherry on a cake for us,” Černivec told reporters in Portland. “Can’t wait to go through that journey with you, our fans and our staff.”
Expansion teams like Portland build their rosters in three ways: the expansion draft, trades with other teams, and the rookie draft. In a normal year, that process takes five to six months. But lengthy and at-times contentious labor negotiations pushed back the process for the Fire and Tempo ahead of the 2026 season, giving them about five weeks to put together a roster.
The terms of the new labor agreement also add to the historic nature of the WNBA’s 30th season.
Women’s sports already enjoy grassroots support in Oregon, and the rekindled Portland Fire are entering the league at the same time that women’s basketball is exploding in popularity. The new contract agreement between the league and union will create the first $1 million-plus earner in the WNBA. It will also set up an arrangement that will share a portion of total league revenue with the players.
