Tonight is the last game and the official end of the season for the Rose City’s WNBA team, the Portland Fire.
After more than two decades since the team folded, the Fire’s return made it the 15th team in the WNBA.
While the team didn’t make the playoffs, they did better than expected and won the hearts of many fans.
Tonight, they will face the Golden State Valkyries at the Moda Center. Kyra Buckley is OPB’s business reporter and has been covering the Fire. She joins us to share more on the team’s first season.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. The Portland Fire will play their last game of the season tonight at the Moda Center. It’s the end of the first season for the newest team in the WNBA. And while the team did not make the playoffs, they won the hearts of thousands of fans.
Kyra Buckley is OPB’s business reporter. She has been covering the Fire this season, and she joins us now. It’s great to have you back in the studio.
Kyra Buckley: Thanks for having me.
Miller: What were the expectations for the Fire going into the season?
Buckley: Not very high. Basically, any new team in any sports league, an expansion team tends to just be the excitement around finally getting a team in that city. So that was true for the Fire. But really they were not expected to win very many games.
Miller: And they didn’t exactly. So what do you think of a 16 and 27 record, meaning 16 wins, 27 losses, for people who are just getting accustomed to sports numbers talk. So that’s a record, 16 and 27 going into the last game?
Buckley: It’s better than expected. Back up. I will just say that if you are a WNBA fan, we got treated last season with the expansion team of the Golden State Valkyries. They set the bar too high, so they did really well. That is just unheard of. Normally, expansion teams come in and it’s amazing if they win a few games. The fact that the Fire won more than 10 games, and some of those were pretty high profile wins and some were on the road, that really says a lot, that the team was really able to beat expectations even though they didn’t clinch that playoff spot.
Miller: One of the questions going in, to me and I assume to others, was how much team cohesion there would be, given that the entire roster was put together with six weeks to spare. That’s partly because of labor issues and partly because you never have that much time. But that was just six weeks to spare. That’s when they finally knew who was gonna be on the team before the season started. Did that particular version of newness show?
Buckley: Yeah, I think it really did. I think the record shows that, that 16-27 record. Going back to the start of the season, normally you have six months to put together a roster for an expansion team. The Fire had six weeks. They had just gotten done with contentious labor negotiations. And expansion teams, by definition, are already put together from players that other teams have said, “Hey, we can let them go.” They’re not a star player. So you’re already making up a team from support players, from role players.
So the unevenness of the record, I think, really shows how they came together at some points and not at others. I actually asked Fire forward Emily Engstler about this after last week’s loss. They lost to Phoenix 94 to 91. I asked her though what she did see as a success for the season, and she said that it was really the relationships the players built on and off the court:
Emily Engstler [recording]: I think no matter what kind of came by us, I do think that we all like each other enough to where, when we do lose, we still have this utmost respect for each other, to come in the next game and play really well.
Buckley: Engstler said they bounce back well together. She also said that they lose well together, and that that’s actually going to make winning a whole lot more fun next season.
Miller: You mentioned there were some real high points. What were some of the high points, in your estimation, this season?
Buckley: I think that people were so excited to see the team play for the first couple games. They would not have cared if the team won or lost. Then the Fire won their second game. So that was a high point that came really early. But they beat New York, a really good team, and it was on a buzzer beater from Sarah Ashlee Barker, a not very well known player. That was a high point.
Then later that month, the Fire again beat expectations. They had a sold-out crowd when they played the Indiana Fever here in Portland. That’s because Caitlin Clark plays for the Indiana Fever. So many many people came to see her play and instead probably left talking about the Fire, who won that game 100 to 84.
Miller: Carla Leite, I hope I’m pronouncing her last name?
Buckley: Leite, like the “Late Show”
Miller: She led the team with points and assists. Who is she?
Buckley: Leite is just 22 years old. She hails from France. I mentioned earlier last year’s expansion team, the Golden State Valkyries, that’s who Carla Leite played for last year. So this is her second expansion team in the WNBA. She’s known as a little bit of a perfectionist. So I actually want to go back to that May 30 win I was just mentioning over Indiana. Here’s what Leite had to say about it:
Carla Leite [recording]: Four turnovers again tonight. So I have to be better on that. But yeah, we did a great job. I think the spacing was really great tonight. We improve a lot about that. So it’s easier to find the good passes.
Buckley: So in the first part she mentions, “Four turnovers … I have to be a little bit better than that.” I should mention during that game she had 18 points and 12 assists.
Miller: But despite great numbers, she’s focusing on the small number of errors that she made, wanting to get better?
Buckley: Nearly every time she talks to media – which is not very much, she seems very shy, although she does not play that way – she always starts by saying something like, “well, I wasn’t perfect, but sure, yeah, my teammates did really well.” I think she’s, like I said, come to be known as a perfectionist.
Miller: What were the low points this season?
Buckley: We talked about some of those really high-profile wins. Then we had an injury in the middle of the season: Sarah Ashlee Barker, who hit that buzzer beater for their first win against New York. She had a knee injury. She was out for the rest of the season, and the team kind of struggled. She wasn’t necessarily the high scorer, but she always brought energy in, and nobody really stepped up to fill that energy. Then when the team realized they weren’t going to make a playoff spot, they just ended up losing some games that they really should have won. One of them was against the Washington Mystics. That was back on August 23.
Normally, the coach and the players come out after the games and they at least have something positive to say. This was the first time that nobody had anything good to say, and the coach just said, “We didn’t show up on defense. I don’t want to talk about anything else besides that.” It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him be negative after a game.
Miller: How would you rate Coach Alex Sarama’s first year?
Buckley: The way the players talk about him would make me want to rate him pretty high. So Alex Sarama is a very interesting character. Portland chose him because he brings this innovative approach to coaching, where basically he really focuses on putting players in situations they’re going to have in games, but adding an unknown. So they had a whole practice where they didn’t wear shoes. They had to play scrimmages against each other or they’ll play two on four or something.
Miller: It sounds like the kind of thing you’d see in a movie about some unconventional coach?
Buckley: Yes, absolutely.
Miller: But not at the professional level.
Buckley: Right. It’s kind of surprising, thinking about professional players showing up and just doing repetitive drills. But players really say that when they show up for Coach Sarama’s practice, they feel like they are just playing at the ballpark with some more disciplined friends than your average player.
Again, as the coach had some of these big losses and disappointments through the season, he still really came out and had good things to say about his players. He never came out and bad mouthed the officiating, the other team, his players or his coaching staff. He almost always came with positive things to say.
Miller: What was attendance like over the course of this season?
Buckley: There was an average of just over 14,000 people who showed up for every Fire game this season. That’s fourth in the WNBA right now. The WNBA has 15 teams. As you mentioned, Dave, the Portland Fire did not make the playoffs. I mean, these are numbers that you see down in San Francisco for the Golden State Valkyries, or for the New York Liberty, or for teams that are going to be playing in this postseason. Also, I should mention that the Portland Fire sold out multiple games, including their first game of the season. That’s almost 20,000 people.
Miller: How do you explain that? Why do you think Portland has shown so much love for a team, even as they’ve often struggled to win?
Buckley: This is something I’ve watched really closely. I’ve been a WNBA fan for a long time, and I was really wondering how the team would be received here in Portland, knowing that expansion teams just don’t win very often. I was pretty surprised that even when the team is down by 10 points, people are on their feet cheering them on. The atmosphere at the Moda Center is just really amazing. People are very excited to see these women play, and they’re just excited for the atmosphere of the games.
It’s very family-friendly. It’s very fun. But I really think it’s deeper than that. I have asked people for years, as I’ve reported on the business of women’s sports, why Oregon is such a hotbed? Nobody can point to just one thing. It’s a mix of things, and I think a lot of it is Oregonians, we love cheering for the underdog. Women’s sports still gets a fraction of the media coverage of men’s sports. So I think a lot of people just naturally gravitate towards cheering on those athletes.
Also, we just have really great college and high school teams, so people know how great the competition is. All of that just kind of comes together. Add into a very inclusive space for families, for queer folks, for people of all ages to come and enjoy athletics at its highest level.
Miller: It’s interesting because a lot of those things you mentioned were put forward by the commissioner of the WNBA and elected officials saying, as part of the pitch, please come here, or we’re coming and we know this is gonna be a great place. But until the season started it wasn’t clear if they were right, if fans would show up. It turns out they were absolutely right.
Let’s take a broader look here. Can you remind us what some of the controversies were that the league has gone through this year?
Buckley: Yeah, the league is just about 30 years old. It hit some growing pains, as most things do when they come from being a niche or having a smaller fan base, and then growing in popularity. So there’s just more visibility for the WNBA, which is great. However, that also means that folks who maybe don’t understand the history of the league know that it is a league that is mostly made up of players of color, that they have often been at the forefront asking for social justice rights.
If you don’t know that history, and you come into the league and you want to put forward your own narrative … And we’ve seen this happen, you may have seen headlines around people protesting outside of games. Basically that has, at times, taken over the headlines. And the league hasn’t always responded in the way that the players would like.
One of the other controversies this year: The commissioner of the WNBA, Cathy Engelbert, announced she’s retiring at the end of the season. She’s a controversial figure, but she also helped grow the league to where it is now. By the way, the players are getting paid exponentially more than when Engelbert took over.
Miller: What are your expectations for the last game of the season tonight against the Golden State Valkyries?
Buckley: I wish I could tell you that I expect them to win. But I expect us to get treated to an excellent game. The Golden State Valkyries are very fun to watch, so glad to welcome them to town. I think that Portland is gonna show up the best they can. And I think we’re gonna see a sold-out crowd.
Miller: What does the offseason look like for the Fire?
Buckley: There’s lots of different options for players now. We have a lot of international players for the Fire, so many will go back to their home countries, whether that is Australia, Canada or one of the European countries.
Miller: Or France, we heard a beautiful French accent earlier.
Buckley: Or France. Yes, all of those players may go back to their home countries and play during the fall basketball season in Europe. Or they may play for leagues that are here. There’s a three-on-three league. There’s also another five-on-five league. One of those leagues was started by former WNBA players so that players can stay stateside during the offseason.
Miller: And just keep playing.
Buckley: Yes.
Miller: Kyra, thanks very much.
Buckley: Thank you for having me.
Miller: Kyra Buckley reports on business and now the Portland Fire for OPB.
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