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Portland is on fire, baby.
Not in the way the president likes to claim sometimes. (The city remains, as of this writing, mostly upright and mostly intact.) Nor has this year’s brutal wildfire forecast come to pass just yet.
Your Portland Fire Starter Pack
Instead, we’re talking about the revival of Portland’s WNBA team. Fans have shown up in record numbers to see the team since its season opener May 9; the crowd, dubbed the “Fire Pit,” has quickly earned a reputation as one of the loudest in the league.
And against all odds, given that the roster was assembled less than eight weeks ago, the team is good. Not just pyrrhic-victory plucky: They’re winning-record good. They’re “beating the 2024 WNBA champion New York Liberty twice in a week” good. They’re “rebuild Moda Center but don’t let the Blazers play there” good.
Portland was already developing a reputation as a global hub for women’s sports. We’ve got one of the most enthusiastic fandoms in women’s soccer; the world’s first-ever sports bar dedicated exclusively to women’s sports launched in Portland.
And the WNBA is ablaze as well, with arenas selling out to see stars like A’ja Wilson, Breanna Stewart and former Oregon Duck Sabrina Ionescu. In 2024, the league soared to new heights with a historic rookie class, featuring Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, who’ve given the team its first high-profile rivalry. That same year, the WNBA finalized an 11-year media rights deal worth roughly $2.2 billion, and fan attendance jumped 48% leaguewide. In just a few short years, the league went from fighting for relevance to one of the fastest-growing sports in America.
So it didn’t take long before fans (including ones with especially big megaphones, like Sen. Ron Wyden and Sport Oregon CEO Jim Etzel) started asking when Portland would revive its former WNBA team. The Portland Fire first burned in 2000 amid a period of rapid expansion for the WNBA (which itself was a brand-new league, having formed in 1996)—but was extinguished in 2002. Led by fan favorites Sylvia Crawley and Jackie Stiles, the early Fire teams never became title contenders, but fans loved the team’s gritty and energetic style of play.
In fall 2024, the WNBA announced Portland would once again get a franchise, owned by RAJ Sports, which also owns the Thorns. The team remained nameless until last summer, when the league announced the Portland Fire would reignite in 2026.
It does not seem like an overreaction to make the Portland Fire your entire personality.
If you are ready, but feel like you need to cram a little first, don’t worry: We made you a cheat sheet. In the following pages, we’ll introduce you to the team’s roster, its in-house DJ, and the adorable corgi who’s stepped up as its unofficial mascot. We’ll also give you the lowdown on what to expect at a Fire game. If you’re the “I have it on vinyl” type, good news: We found out where to get OG Fire merch. And we put together an executive summary of the league’s spiciest controversies, so you’ll be ready to talk trash in an informed, conscientious way.
You don’t actually need to study to enjoy women’s basketball, of course. But we hope the following pages will spark a little curiosity in nonsports fans and fan the enthusiasm of die-hards.
Burn, Portland, burn.
—Christen McCurdy, interim Arts & Culture editor, and Brody Napier, contributing writer
