Sarah Ashlee Barker's Buzzer-Beater Was 'Portland Fire 101'

📍PORTLAND, Ore. — It wouldn't have been quite right if Bridget Carleton's shot had gone in.

The Fire's de facto franchise player—picked first in the expansion draft, called a future All-Star by the general manager and given a max contract—capping off a dominant 26-point night by hitting a long off-the-dribble isolation three-pointer to give Portland its first WNBA win in 24 years? Too easy of a story.

It was much more appropriate that the Fire scraped past the New York Liberty because Sarah Ashlee Barker was in the exact right place to rebound Carleton's miss and put it back in at the buzzer.

Head coach Alex Sarama called it "Portland Fire 101."

Carleton joked that her three-point attempt, which missed wide left and went off the backboard outside of the square, "bricked perfectly" to set up Barker's game-winner.

Barker herself called it a "God wink," letting her know she was where she was supposed to be after losing someone close to her family yesterday.

Kamiah Smalls, who scored 13 points off the bench in her Fire debut after missing training camp with a knee injury, could only come up with "Hell yeah" as words to describe the game-winner, the first iconic on-court moment for the new incarnation of the Fire.