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📍PORTLAND, Ore. — Less than a month before the Fire's inaugural WNBA season tips off, Vanja Černivec is once again asking you to trust her.
When she hired former Cleveland Cavaliers director of player development Alex Sarama as head coach in October, she asked you to trust their belief in a cutting-edge training method called the Constraints-Led Approach (CLA) to supersede his lack of experience as a head coach in a major professional league.
When she made Bridget Carleton the Fire's first pick in the expansion draft and later gave her a three-year max contract, she asked you to trust that a 29-year-old going into her eighth WNBA season who only became a full-time starter in the last two years on a loaded Minnesota Lynx team could become an All-Star and franchise player if you just took her out from the shadow of Napheesa Collier and Kayla McBride.
When she selected former UConn star Nika Mühl from the Seattle Storm in the expansion draft, she asked you to trust the Fire to have the "best performance and health medical team in the league" that would be up for reviving Mühl's career after she suffered back-to-back ACL tears in both knees that kept her out last season and will keep her out this coming season as well.
On Monday, Černivec made yet another big ask of fans when the Fire were on the clock with the franchise's first-ever draft pick, No. 7 overall.
I took in the Fire's inaugural college draft at Moda Center, where a raucous crowd of season-ticket holders watched the ESPN telecast on the Jumbotron and took photos with some of the team's new players who are already in town ahead of Sunday's opening day of training camp. It was the franchise's first public event since they had actual players to sell to fans, and from the looks of the crowd, they've already sold plenty of brand-new No. 6 Carleton jerseys.
It was a gathering of people waiting to explode as soon as WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert stepped to the podium and announced the Fire's selection. And with big-name college stars like LSU's Flau'jae Johnson, UCLA's Angela Dugalić and Gianna Kneepkens, and South Carolina's Raven Johnson and Ta'Niya Latson still on the board, the name Engelbert called for Portland was 20-year-old Spanish point guard Iyana Martín.
You could feel the air leave the room.
It wasn't disappointment so much as confusion, not helped by the fact that Martín is still overseas and wasn't even in New York to be the first player to walk across the stage and get a Fire jersey from Engelbert.
Good front-office executives in any sport don't make draft picks to win the pep rally, but combined with all the other things the Fire have asked you to trust in their far-from-smooth 18-month rollout, this one certainly didn't land the way they hoped. Martín was widely projected as a top-10 pick going into the draft, so the Fire taking her seventh was far from the off-the-board stunner of a pick the other Portland professional basketball team made last June. But for the Moda Center crowd hoping for some recognizable star power to cap off the run-up to opening night, it wasn't the news they wanted.
Later, in her post-draft press conference, Černivec confirmed that Martín will not come over to the WNBA until the 2027 season, instead staying in Spain this year to return to full health from a stomach virus she suffered during EuroBasket and prepare to play with the national team at the FIBA World Cup in September.
Insult to injury for the Moda Center gathering. Not only was the Fire's first-ever draft pick a name most of them didn't know, they won't even get to see her until next year.
Černivec is hoping you trust that Martín is worth the wait. She twice called her a "generational talent," said she "dreamt" of being able to land her last year with the Golden State Valkyries and rattled off the names of other players who have been named FIBA Under-19 World Cup MVP: Breanna Stewart, A'ja Wilson, Paige Bueckers, Caitlin Clark.
"She can push the pace," Černivec said. "She's one of the best at reading the pick-and-roll and can break down a defense and get to the hoop. We thought she was just an amazing fit for what our coaches wanted to do."
After the April 3 expansion draft, Černivec promised the Fire would be "aggressive" and "competitive" in free agency. She admitted Monday that they struck out on a few of their top targets and had to pivot.
"We have no history or record," she said. "There's nothing really to show or advocate for us."
Much like the emphasis on international talent thus far, the Fire's lack of luck in free agency compared to the Tempo was completely expected. Toronto is coming into player meetings with Sandy Brondello, a future Hall of Fame coach who has won championships with two different WNBA franchises; Portland is coming with Sarama, a 30-year-old from the U.K. that most people who aren't Rip City Remix fans or CLA acolytes hadn't heard of until he got this job in October. One of those is going to be a stronger sales pitch than the other for a brand-new team.
That was the choice Černivec made when she chose to build the organization the way she did, focusing on creating a long-term program over making the kind of immediate splash the Valkyries front office she was a part of last year did. Portland will become a free-agent destination in a few years if all of these bets she's making pay off, but it was always going to be a tough sell now.
I happen to be higher on the Fire's entire operation than current public consensus, but I recognize that my perspective is colored by being as involved with this world as I am.
I've known Sarama in passing for several years, going back to his stint as director of player development for the Trail Blazers' G League team, the Rip City Remix, during the 2023-24 season. In our limited interactions, I've always found him to be sharp, personable and engaging, and the Blazers' front-office staff—most of whom I am very close to—all swear by him as one of the smartest basketball minds they've ever worked with.
I haven't gotten to know Černivec that well yet on a personal level, but she's gotten similar rave reviews from many mutual acquaintances who have worked with her in the NBA, WNBA and at the NBA Academy youth camps she came up in, whose judgment I trust implicitly.
And since the Fire drafted Martín on Monday, the feedback I've gotten from WNBA people I trust has been near-unanimous that she was a great pick at that spot, and a talent worth waiting a year to see in Portland.
I'm willing to trust all of that to be true because I know these people and think highly of them based on my experience with them.
But if you're a fan who bought season tickets for the new WNBA team in town and are now heading into opening night in less than a month with a largely unproven coach, a roster with more international players than American college stars you recognize, players that can mostly be described as "upside swings," and a first-round pick that isn't going to play here for another year?
You have every right to be skeptical until Černivec proves you wrong.
"What I say to the fans is, please have trust in our scouting department," she said Monday. "We watch globally what players are doing and the levels of the leagues they're competing at. To the fans and the community, please go watch their highlights internationally and once they're here, just give them a chance."
Maybe in two years, all of the prophecies will come true.
Maybe Sarama actually is a genius coach who revolutionizes the WNBA and has star free agents lining up to play for him.
Maybe Carleton does become an out-of-nowhere mid-career first-time All-Star like Kayla Thornton did in Golden State last year after the Valkyries front office Černivec was a part of took her in the expansion draft from New York.
Maybe the Bhathals really have hired the best medical staff in the world and can give Mühl a new lease on life after losing two straight years to serious knee injuries.
Maybe when Martín does come over next year, she actually is the "generational talent" Černivec is promising her to be.
Maybe the reward for the Fire likely being one of the worst teams in the WNBA for their first two years of existence will be landing Juju Watkins or Sarah Strong in one of the next two drafts.
There's a world where all of those things happen, and there's a world where none of them happen.
Černivec likes her odds, and she's hoping you'll trust her, too.
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