Once Abandoned, Portland Is Regaining Its Place in the WNBA

PORTLAND — As interest in women’s sports has grown across America, Portland has been at the forefront. 

The NWSL’s Thorns draw record crowds, and the country’s first women’s sports bar, the Sports Bra, opened in 2022. The LPGA’s Portland Classic is the longest-running event in league history, starting in 1972. Both Oregon and Oregon State’s women’s basketball teams have made deep March Madness runs in recent years.  

In the heart of the city, two basketball arenas, the Moda Center and its predecessor, the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, sit side by side. But neither has hosted a WNBA game for almost a quarter century.

Next year, that will change.

In September, the WNBA awarded its 15th franchise to Portland after the city spent years trying to land a team. The still-unnamed team will share an owner with the Thorns in RAJ Sports, which paid a record $125 million expansion fee and also has a minority stake in the Sacramento Kings. The franchise will start play in 2026. 

It’s a return to a market the WNBA previously abandoned. From 2000 to 2002, the Portland Fire played at the Moda Center and were led by Jackie Stiles, who left Missouri State as the all-time leading scorer in women’s college basketball. Despite average crowds of about 8,000, just below league average at the time, the Fire folded, becoming the only team in league history to cease operations without making the playoffs. 

But Portland’s new team is setting up shop in a totally different landscape with an ownership group that’s focused on women’s sports, which laid the groundwork for the successful bid, and may provide a model for growing women’s hoops across the country.

Portland’s role in professional women’s basketball predates the Fire. From 1996 to 1998, the VMC briefly housed the Power of the short-lived American Basketball League. They won the 1997 Western Conference behind coach Lin Dunn, who drafted Caitlin Clark 27 years later as GM of the Indiana Fever.

“We averaged about 6,000 a night and we did it with really very little marketing money,” former Power GM Linda Weston tells Front Office Sports. “It was mostly grassroots. That’s why I’m really excited about the ownership of this new WNBA franchise. They clearly have the resources and the expertise to market the team properly. We were very successful here in Portland. Some of the other teams within the ABL were not. There were a lot of things the ABL did right, but ultimately, the league was underfunded.”

The Fire arrived two years after the ABL folded with plenty of local business sponsors, according to Sylvia Crawley, who played for both the Power and the Fire. It was a first-class organization, but one without a winning record. 

“The attention around it and the excitement around it was great,” says Mike Barrett, the Trail Blazers’ longtime television voice who also provided play-by-play for the Fire. “When people talk about teams coming in and then shuttering, some of the reason could be fan support. That was not the reason it happened in Portland. I never felt like there was a lack of fan support.”

Originally, the NBA owned every WNBA team and paid the cost of operations. That changed in 2002, when the dot-com bubble burst and the league’s board of governors allowed teams to be sold individually, with NBA owners having first crack at a purchase. The WNBA wasn’t profitable, so not everyone was interested, including late Blazers owner Paul Allen. 

When Portland businessman Terry Emmert and Basketball Hall of Famer Clyde Drexler, a longtime Blazer, attempted to buy the Fire, the Allens declined to be involved in a deal. (The relationship with the NBA is a problem the league is still grappling with, as many of the WNBA’s original NBA investors have started to grow impatient over the league’s failure to turn a profit and the lack of return after nearly 30 years of investment.) 

“Allen decided to give the team back to the league for nothing,” Emmert told FOS. 

The Miami Sol, another WNBA team, also folded when the Fire did, and from 2002 to 2008, the league saw more dissolution than expansion; the four-time champion Houston Comets, led by Sheryl Swoopes, and Charlotte Sting, featuring star player and current South Carolina coach Dawn Staley, both ceased operations. 

The WNBA is closer than ever to profitability thanks to a historic 11-year, $2.2 billion media-rights deal and league interest at an all-time high. In October 2023, commissioner Cathy Engelbert awarded the first of four planned expansion bids to Golden State, in what marked the league’s first new team since 2008. 

Portland nearly won that bid and was in the mix for the next one that went to Toronto. Kirk Brown, another local Portland businessman, led the charge, going so far as to schedule a press conference to announce the news. But it fell apart at the last minute due to multiple disagreements with Engelbert. 

“It was just about timing and continuing to build the momentum to where it became very real,” says Jim Etzel, Sport Oregon CEO, the state’s sports commission. “We just felt like we had a team, and we lost it before we had it, and let’s stay after it.”

In the fall of 2023, the Thorns were for sale. The Bhathal family, sports investors who run a successful manufacturing operation, put together a deal through their investment group, RAJ Sports. 

The Thorns are one of the premier franchises in the NWSL. Playing in legendary Providence Park, they won multiple league titles, and led the league in attendance across its first eight seasons. The Bhathals were also tasked with restoring the team’s culture and image, which they’ve had early success with in their short time owning the team: They took over after the scandal involving former coach Paul Riley, who sexually coerced and verbally abused Thorns players in 2014 and 2015 before going on to coach the North Carolina Courage. That led to the sale of the team from owner Merritt Paulson after it was revealed he downplayed the players abuse to the Courage and for the dismissal of general manager Gavin Wilkinson.

“While we were closing the deal [for the Thorns], we actually just read about the WNBA expansion bid that fell through in Portland,” co-owner Lisa Bhathal Merage tells FOS. “At that point … we knew the WNBA was gaining as much momentum as it was. So we just placed a call into the league office to just express our interest. And it just kind of went from there.”

When the WNBA awarded the bid in September, Portland became just the seventh city to boast an NWSL and WNBA team—and the smallest market among them. The Bhathals plan to capitalize on their ownership stakes, creating a practice facility that will house both teams, the first of its kind in professional women’s sports. Each team will have its own side of the building, with mutual areas for recovery, dining, and athletic training. 

“That breakfast area is going to be like an Olympic Village,” said Karina LeBlanc, the EVP of strategic growth development at RAJ Sports.

LeBlanc, who had a 15-year career in professional soccer as a goalkeeper and played for the Canadian national team, was recently named to her new position after serving as the Thorns’ GM from 2021 to 2024. She’s excited to see what each team can gain from sharing the roof with another. “Usually you just have yourself,” she says. “But now you can swap notes.”

“The goal is to make this the most extensive performance center for professional female athletes in the world,” Merage says. “I know sometimes in men’s sports, it’s kept very separate, but the women are really liking this idea. We’re looking at things through the female lens.”

For now, Portland’s WNBA team operates from deep in the bowels of Providence Park. On a rainy November day, LeBlanc conducted exit interviews for the final time with her team while preparing to spend her offseason growing the WNBA operation. She’s the latest NWSL executive to join the WNBA expansion ranks, following Valkyries president Jess Smith, who came from Angel City FC. The two are friends and have sat with each other while scouting college soccer games, and LeBlanc said she’ll probably be calling Smith for advice on building a team as the Valkyries prepare for their own inaugural season. 

While LeBlanc said she and Smith are “allies for each other,” they could also become rivals as Portland works to cement its footing before beginning play next year. 

“Not to be competitive or anything, but … we’re tracking ahead of where the Valkyries were at the same time,” Merage says. 

The team hopes to have a name by the spring and will also start to build out its staff. LeBlanc and Merage said they haven’t ruled out using the Fire name, partially due to the fact that trademark issues have barred them from using other names they’ve been interested in. 

As interest in women’s sports continues to grow, Portland is looking to basketball to continue what the NWSL established. The city is slated to host the 2030 women’s Final Four, bringing even more of the women’s hoops spotlight to town. Almost a quarter century after the Fire last played, this new team will begin under a completely different set of circumstances. 

“I don’t know that the timing was right for [the Fire],” Weston, the former Power GM, said. “But the timing is definitely right now.”