The Portland Fire took the first step in building their inaugural roster on Friday in the WNBA expansion draft.
Finally! Players.
The offseason has been the absolute worst-case scenario for both the Fire and the Toronto Tempo as they prepared for their expansion seasons amid a labor dispute and the unknowns that came with it. And now the timeline to put together the team for Day 1 has been squished into mere weeks instead of months.
But there are finally players.
The Fire took unrestricted free agent Bridget Carleton from the Minnesota Lynx with the first pick in the draft. Carleton is a solid veteran player who averaged 6.5 points and 3.6 rebounds last season, starting all 44 regular-season games and all six playoff games. She’s been with the Lynx for nearly the entirety of her seven-year WNBA career.
“Everybody loves to play with Bridget,” Fire general manager Vanja Cernivec said. “She did an amazing job in Minnesota, and if you take her out of that environment and start building the team around her, we think she can be an All-Star player and perform much better when it comes to the stats. She’s someone that brings unique qualities on both ends of the floor.”
The Fire made 11 selections, including Carla Leite of the Golden State Valkyries, and the reserved rights to both Maya Caldwell from the Atlanta Dream and Chloe Bibby from the Indiana Fever.
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Here is the complete list of the Fire’s selections in the expansion draft on Friday:
- Bridget Carleton, Minnesota Lynx (UFA)
- Carla Leite, Golden State Valkyries
- Luisa Geiselsöder, Dallas Wings (reserved)
- Emily Engstler, Washington Mystics (reserved)
- Maya Caldwell, Atlanta Dream (reserved)
- Chloe Bibby, Indiana Fever (reserved)
- Haley Jones, Dallas Wings (reserved)
- Nyadiew Puoch, Atlanta Dream (draft rights)
- Sarah Ashlee Barker, Los Angeles Sparks
- Sug Sutton, Washington Mystics (RFA)
- Nika Mühl, Seattle Storm
What stands out about many of the players the Fire selected is their versatility, which should fit into coach Alex Sarama’s analytics-driven system. Sarama employs the constraints-led approach (CLA), which emphasizes creativity in problem-solving and trains players to adapt to moments that can’t be practiced.
But again, this is just the start for the Fire. The college draft is on April 13. Portland holds Nos. 7, 17 and 37 in the draft after trading up four spots from No. 21 in exchange for not selecting any players from the Chicago Sky.
And then there’s free agency. Well over 100 of the league’s players are free agents this year, and the WNBA hasn’t yet announced when free agency will start.
Given those factors, it’s uncertain how many of the 11 expansion draft players will be on the court when the Fire start the season.
Last year, eight of the 11 players that the Valkyries selected in the expansion draft were on the roster at the end of the season. Golden State, though, was not competing with another expansion team for the top available unprotected players.
Fans in Oregon who had hoped that Sabrina Ionescu might return to the state where she played in college had their hopes dashed earlier this week when she said at USA Basketball camp that New York is where she’s supposed to be.
Other players in the W with Oregon ties include the Sparks’ Cameron Brink, who grew up in Beaverton but is still under contract and wasn’t going to be left unprotected, and the Mercury’s Satou Sabally, who shared the court with Ionescu at Oregon.
Sabally’s sister, Nyara, also a Ducks standout, played for the Liberty before she was selected in the expansion draft Friday by the Toronto Tempo.
Australian Nyadiew Puoch, whose unsigned draft pick rights the Fire selected from Atlanta, is expected to sign and join the team this season, per a report from ESPN. With Nika Mühl recently suffering another ACL tear, which will hold her out for the entire season, that leaves at a minimum two more Day 1 players for the Fire who are not yet part of the organization.
Looking for more on the WNBA expansion draft? Read all our coverage of it at The IX Sports.