What the WNBA's New CBA Means for the Portland Fire's Inaugural Roster

After a months-long standoff and 100-hour negotiations over one exhausting week earlier this month, the WNBA and the Women's National Basketball Players Association finally have a deal in place for a new collective-bargaining agreement.

That means the Portland Fire's inaugural expansion season will begin on time, with their season opener at Moda Center set for May 9 against the Chicago Sky. With 47 days to go before that date, they still have no players.

The expansion draft for the Fire and Toronto Tempo was supposed to happen in December. Free agency was supposed to start around late January or early February. Front-office staffs were supposed to be focusing all of their attention right now on college scouting ahead of the April 13 draft. The protracted labor battle put all of that on hold and now sets up a chaotic sprint to the start of the season.

Training camps open around the WNBA on April 19. Between now and then, Fire general manager Vanja Černivec and her staff will need to put together a roster completely from scratch—and with a partially new set of rules in place that teams just got in the past few days.

Assuming the labor deal gets ratified by both the league and players' union by the end of the month, here is the schedule for the Fire's ultra-compressed offseason:

• Early April: Fire and Tempo front offices receive lists of protected players from the WNBA's existing 13 teams
• April 6: Expansion draft
• April 7-8: Window for teams to extend qualifying offers and core designations to free agents (I'll explain what this means below, since it's different from the NBA's system)
• April 9-11: Window for free agents to agree to new deals
• April 13: WNBA Draft
• April 19: Training camps begin
• April 29: Fire's first preseason game, in Seattle against the Storm
• May 9: Fire's inaugural season opener, at home against the Chicago Sky

Other people are more qualified than me to talk about what this CBA means for the WNBA and the future of women's professional sports, with the huge salary increases, revenue share and added off-court benefits that are included in it. The immediate concern for the Fire is how they'll go about putting together a roster over the next month with these new rules in place.

Here's what they have to work with and how the final roster could look.

The salary cap and contract types