The Complete Portland Fire Experience On Display in Expansion Season Opener

📍PORTLAND, Ore. — Exactly 600 days ago, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert stood onstage at Moda Center to announce that the league was returning to Portland over two decades after the original incarnation of the Fire folded.

A lot has happened since then: team president hirings and firings, a messy rollout of the name and logo, a failed attempt by the Bhathal family to parlay the WNBA expansion team into a bid for the Trail Blazers. (I'm not going to add to the jokes on social media about the two teams' comparative budgets for free t-shirts, but know that they're out there.)

But mostly, a lot of waiting. Even more than normal, because the lengthy CBA negotiations this spring meant the new basketball team didn't have any basketball players until just over a month ago. And then, in the span of about a week, they had a whole team.

It took a lot to get here, but the WNBA is finally back in Portland now, fully operational.

In every way, Saturday was about what I expected, and a good preview of what the next four months are going to look like.

The Moda Center crowd? Electric. The announced sellout of 19,335 was louder than any post-COVID Blazers crowd, with the exception of Damian Lillard's first game in Portland with the Bucks two years ago.

"The Fire Pit was lit," Sarah Ashlee Barker said afterwards.

The vibes? Incredible. The Fire's home court and "Rebel" jerseys looked phenomenal, several Blazers players and Sleater-Kinney singer-guitarist Carrie Brownstein made up celebrity row, and the halftime performance by Ashanti was targeted squarely at those of us who were in eighth grade when the original incarnation of the Fire folded.

The basketball? Sloppy, as the process of implementing Alex Sarama's principles is ongoing, but very competitive. Much more so than it should be considering the talent gap between an expansion Portland squad playing its first-ever game and a Chicago Sky team with playoff aspirations.

"We saw glimpses tonight of what we have the potential to be," Sarama said after the Fire's 98-83 loss, which saw them erase a 13-point halftime deficit before running out of steam. "I think it's just a case of how we can get to that more consistently as a group. But I'm really, really encouraged."

The result? A loss, obviously. There are going to be a lot of those this season. There usually are for expansion teams.

But all the reasons this should be a fun summer at Moda Center were fully on display on Saturday.