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It’s not surprising the Portland Fire doesn’t have an official, costumed mascot—one akin to the New York Liberty’s Ellie the Elephant or the Seattle Storm’s Doppler. A year ago, the team was little more than a concept, and anyway, several long-standing NBA teams (such as the Knicks and the Lakers) have never had mascots. On the other hand, the Trail Blazers have two, which feels a little unfair. (The original Fire did have a costumed mascot—a firehouse Dalmatian named Spot—but it appears when team folded Spot was taken to a nice farm upstate.)
Clearly, there are no rules here.
But because there are no rules, that also means there’s nothing in the rules that says a real live dog can’t be the mascot for a women’s basketball team.
Enter Pancake.
Pancake is a 7-year-old female corgi owned by Fire center Megan Gustafson, with just under 10,000 followers on Instagram. Gustafson wasn’t available to talk to us about her short-legged buddy, but a scan of Pancake’s social media suggests she’s settling in quite cheerfully in Portland; an April post on the team’s account took a corgi’s eye view of Media Day, as Pancake cheerfully trotted around Oregon Episcopal School with a camera mounted on her back.
Pancake is also the subject of a 2025 children’s book, Pancake’s Passport, written by Gustafson. It offers a little backstory about how Gustafson and Pancake came together (Gustafson traveled to Poland to adopt her while playing basketball in Hungary) and how the two have traveled together as Gustafson’s career has taken her around the globe (Gustafson played in London and Las Vegas before signing with the Fire).
In her travels, Pancake encounters a series of friendly, talking animals who offer biblically inspired instructions. As a secular-minded adult, I’ll respectfully submit that I’m not the audience for this book. But I’ll also say this: One of the handful of things that inspires near-religious awe in me is the sight of a corgi blissed out in a field of grass (as Pancake did in a recent Insta post announcing her arrival in Portland). And the fact that Pancake’s middle name—Rose—was bestowed on her well before she came to live in Portland feels providential. There are a lot of ways to get inspired, in other words. And Pancake is here to help.
