WNBA's Plans for Portland Expansion Team Fall Through

Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has deferred Portland's bid over arena renovation concerns.

Just under a month ago, the WNBA officially announced a 13th franchise in San Francisco to begin play in 2025. That day, commissioner Cathy Engelbert said she wanted to add a 14th team that same year. Multiple media outlets reported that Portland was expected to be that second expansion team, with a vote from the NBA's Board of Governors set to finalize the decision soon.

It turns out that optimism was a little premature.

On Wednesday afternoon, as first reported by The Oregonian, the WNBA's planned expansion to Portland was scuttled, at least for now, by concerns over the timing of a multi-year renovation project the Trail Blazers plan to complete on the Moda Center before the end of the decade.

"[I]n light of the potential renovation of the Moda Center currently anticipated to take place during consecutive summers, consideration of a WNBA franchise for Portland will be deferred for now until the timing and scope of the arena improvements are settled," Engelbert wrote in a letter to Oregon's senior U.S. Senator, Ron Wyden, who has been involved in the effort to bring a team to Portland. "When the time is right, we look forward to pursuing prospects for bringing the WNBA to Portland."

The news is certainly a blow to sports fans in the area, and those working behind the scenes, who saw Portland as an ideal market for a WNBA franchise to be successful, but it isn't entirely unexpected. There are still a lot of moving parts and plans yet to be finalized when it comes to the Moda Center's future. The Blazers own the Moda Center but were not directly involved in the ownership group pushing for WNBA expansion. That group was led by ZoomInfo cofounder Kirk Brown.