The Portland Fire chose 11 players from across the WNBA in the league’s expansion draft Friday.
Here’s who the Portland Fire drafted:
- Bridget Carleton, Minnesota Lynx
- Carla Leite, Golden State Valkyries
- Luisa Geiselsöder, Dallas Wings
- Emily Engstler, Washington Mystics
- Maya Caldwell, Atlanta Dream
- Chloe Bibby, Indiana Fever
- Haley Jones, Dallas Wings
- Nyadiew Puoch, Atlanta Dream
- Sarah Ashlee Barker, Los Angeles Sparks
- Sug Sutton, Washington Mystics
- Nika Mühl, Seattle Storm
The general manager for the Portland Fire, Vanja Černivec, told reporters their goal was to get players that would make great teammates and fit into the style of basketball the coaches are developing. She said the group will be competitive on the court while bringing joy to fans.
“I can’t wait for our fan base to get to know these players and the players’ stories,” Černivec said. “I feel like everybody has an amazing story to share.”
Each team was only able to select one player with a designation of unrestricted free agent. For Portland, that’s Carleton, who’s held a solid-but-not-starring role with the title contenders the Minnesota Lynx since 2019.
“Everybody loves to play with Bridget,” Černivec 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.”
The expansion draft took place over two rounds. Portland chose Carleton overall as number one, and in the second round, the Fire took Haley Jones from the Dallas Wings first. Jones made plenty of trips to Eugene and Corvallis during college — she played for Stanford University when it was still part of the Pac-12. Jones was originally drafted by the Atlanta Dream in 2023.
The expansion draft is the first official roster-building move the Fire have been able to make. In a normal year, expansion teams would have had five to six months to build a roster. However, lengthy and tense labor negotiations pushed back the process for the Fire and Toronto Tempo leading up to the 2026 season. The delays wound up condensing their team-building timelines to about five weeks.
Although talks for the new labor agreement pushed back the expansion draft, the terms of the agreement add to the historic nature of the WNBA’s 30th season.
Women’s sports already enjoy strong support in Oregon, and the rekindled Portland Fire are entering the league at the same time that women’s basketball is exploding in popularity. The recently negotiated agreement between the league and union will create the first $1 million-plus earner in the WNBA. It will also set up a revenue-sharing arrangement that will share a portion of total revenue with the players.
Players chosen in the expansion draft aren’t guaranteed a spot on the Fire or Tempo’s rosters. But it’s likely many of the players drafted Friday will be on the teams when the season starts in May.
Here’s who the Toronto Tempo drafted:
- Julie Allemand, Los Angeles Sparks
- Nyara Sabally, New York Liberty (note: played college basketball at University of Oregon)
- Marina Mabrey, Connecticut Sun
- Aaliyah Nye, Las Vegas Aces
- Lexi Held, Phoenix Mercury
- María Conde, Golden State Valkyries
- Maria Kliundikova, Minnesota Lynx
- Adje Kane, New York Liberty
- Nikolina Milić, Minnesota Lynx
- Kitija Laksa, Phoenix Mercury
- Kristy Wallace, Indiana Fever
This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.