Portland Fire Name Alex Sarama Franchise's First-Ever Head Coach

The Portland Fire have named Alex Sarama their first-ever head coach, the team officially announced on Friday morning days after inadvertently tipping the choice in a deleted social-media post.

Sarama, a native of the United Kingdom, has had a rapid ascent in the basketball coaching ranks, including a year in Portland. He joined the Trail Blazers' G League team, the Rip City Remix, for their inaugural season in 2023-24 as their director of player development before leaving last summer to take the same role with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Sarama was the choice of general manager Vanja Černivec, who recently joined the expansion team as its top basketball decision-maker after spending last season with the Golden State Valkyries during their highly successful first year in the WNBA. The two have a pre-existing working relationship and familiarity with each other. Before Černivec joined Golden State's front office, she spent two seasons as the general manager of the London Lions women's team in the British Basketball League. During her second season there, Sarama joined the organization as director of methodology, helping to implement player-development strategy for the Lions' men's and women's teams as well as their youth development academy. They also previously both worked for the NBA league office in the NBA Academy program and have similar backgrounds in international basketball and in youth development and scouting.

“Alex represents the next generation of coaching,” Černivec said in a statement. “He’s not just teaching the game, he’s transforming it. His approach to player development, grounded in evidence-based science, research and creativity, aligns with our vision to make Portland a global hub for innovation in women’s sports.”

Sarama is a proponent of a training method known as the Constraints-Led Approach (CLA), which has become increasingly popular among high-level athletes including Victor Wembanyama, Kelsey Plum and Shohei Ohtani. He is the author of a book called Transforming Basketball, which applies many of those principles to basketball.

Under Sarama's direction, the Blazers adopted some of these concepts with the Remix. This continued last season after he left, with assistant GM Sergi Oliva serving as head coach. Sarama brought CLA principles to Cleveland when he joined Kenny Atkinson's staff as director of player development, reinventing their approach to practicing and skills training. Last season, the Cavs went 64-18, finishing with the best record in the Eastern Conference.

The Fire hiring Sarama also continues a trend of WNBA teams choosing coaches from NBA staffs. Both of the coaches in this year's Finals, the Las Vegas Aces' Becky Hammon and Phoenix Mercury's Nate Tibbetts, were longtime NBA assistants before they joined the WNBA. Černivec, who herself spent two seasons as an international scout with the Chicago Bulls, was involved in the Valkyries' coaching search last year that eventually landed on Natalie Nakase. Nakase, too, spent five seasons in the NBA and G League as an assistant in the Clippers organization before moving over to the WNBA. She won Coach of the Year in 2025, her first season as a head coach, after leading Golden State to the playoffs in their first year as an expansion team.

The hiring of Sarama comes on the heels of former WNBA player Ashley Battle joining the Fire earlier this week as Vice President of Basketball Operations, Strategy and Innovation, Černivec's top assistant in the front office. Now, the three will begin preparing for the upcoming expansion draft, which could be delayed due to the ongoing collective-bargaining negotiations between the WNBA and players union.

The WNBA's current CBA expires on Oct. 31, and it's highly unlikely that the league and the WNBPA have a new deal in place by then. The sides are still far apart in talks and, in the final weeks of the playoffs, a public back-and-forth between Minnesota Lynx superstar Napheesa Collier and WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert made clear how little goodwill there is between the league and players.

Needless to say, there's a very good chance the Fire's expansion draft isn't going to happen in December like it would normally. Engelbert said earlier this month that the date and rules for the draft won't be set until there's a new CBA.