WNBA Mini-Mailbag: Next Steps for Portland's New Expansion Team

Discussing when the Bhathals will hire staff and how the new team's roster will be put together ahead of their 2026 debut.

Late last week, I put out a call for questions for a final offseason mailbag. Most of the responses I got were about the Trail Blazers, who start camp one week from Monday.

But following last week’s big announcement, I got a couple of questions about what the immediate future holds for Portland’s forthcoming WNBA expansion team. I figured I’d address those in a separate post to tie up the loose ends for now, before I shift back fully into Blazers mode next week.

Portland's Delayed WNBA Expansion Was a Blessing in Disguise

The Blazers portion of the mailbag is coming later this week, and then media day will be next Monday with training camp starting the day after.

Do you have a sense of a timeline of when the new WNBA team will start hiring personnel?

- Jason

The Bhathals said at their press conference last week that they’re starting the hiring process immediately, and I highly doubt they’d pay $125 million for a team and have absolutely no idea of any names they’d want to pursue. I’m sure there’s already a shortlist of candidates for the highest-level roles.

I would guess the first hire they make will probably be for a team president on the business side as they go through the process of picking a name and logo and rolling out their branding. They have a little bit more lead time before they have to worry about basketball operations because there’s another full WNBA season before they start playing.

For comparison: The Toronto group had a team president already on board (former Raptors executive Teresa Resch) when the team was announced in May. Golden State hired a president (Jess Smith, who previously worked for the NWSL’s Angel City FC) in January, about three months after they officially announced the expansion team. They hired a general manager (former New York Liberty assistant GM Ohemaa Nyanin) in May, around the same time they unveiled the Valkyries name and logo. Nyanin hired an assistant GM in July.

That should give you an idea of how these things usually unfold. I’d expect the Bhathals to have a team president in place relatively soon and a GM a little further down the road. The coaching hire will come last.

On the basketball ops side, one thing worth noting is that the Blazers have three former WNBA players (director of basketball strategy Asjha Jones, scouting manager Sheri Sam and scout Tina Thompson) in high-level roles in their front office. I have no idea whether any of them would be looking to jump over from the NBA back to the W, but at a minimum, all three of them have plenty of connections in the women’s game and could easily be leaned on by the Bhathals for help identifying candidates when it’s time for the team to build out its front office.

I’ll be following what Golden State and Toronto do very closely because it will probably inform how Portland is rolled out as well.

Also about the WNBA, how do they start a team from scratch to get the players? Some form of draft or how does it work? Really excited about this for Rip City!

- Connie S.

The WNBA hasn’t fully laid that process out yet, but typically when leagues add new teams, there’s an expansion draft, where the new teams get to select players from the existing teams, who get to protect a certain number of players from their roster from being taken.

WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said at her All-Star press conference in July that the expansion draft for the Golden State Valkyries, who are starting in 2025, would likely take place in December, so we’ll find out how it’s going to work in the next few months. Portland’s expansion draft is going to look a little different, because Toronto is coming in at the same time, so they’ll have to somehow figure out which team gets the first pick. But right now there’s no clarity on how many players will come from that expansion draft, and how many players they’ll have to sign in free agency or take in the regular WNBA draft—and where they’ll be picking in the draft.

I’ll be very curious where the expansion teams are slotted in the college draft. If I had to guess, they won’t be eligible for the lottery in their first year, meaning this coming year, Golden State would have the No. 5 overall pick, behind the four lottery teams but ahead of the eight playoff teams. The following year, they’d have to decide which of the two expansion teams picks sixth and seventh. It could be a situation where they flip a coin and the winner gets to decide whether they want the first pick in the expansion draft or the higher pick in the WNBA draft, like how the team that wins the coin toss in a football game gets to choose whether to get the ball in the first half or the second half.

That’s entirely me speculating about how it could work. I’ve heard nothing official. But we’ll find out soon enough.

The other thing worth keeping in mind is that the WNBA’s roster rules might look different by 2026 than they do now, because their CBA is up after the 2025 season. It’s possible things like the number of roster sports (currently 12 per team, which many players think needs to be more), free-agency and trade rules and eligibility requirements for college players could change with the new deal.

(On that note, you should be rooting for the college eligibility rules to stay the same in the new CBA, so that Juju Watkins can’t come out until 2027, when Portland would be eligible for the lottery.)

The WNBA has grown exponentially in popularity and visibility over the last year and has a lucrative new TV deal kicking in after next season. A lot of things are going to have to change about the way the league operates to adjust to its new place in the sports landscape, and some of those things will affect how the incoming expansion teams come together.