The Portland Fire has blazed through its de facto first quarter of its WNBA revival. Is their current success sustainable?
Sometimes the WNBA's accused scriptwriters are hardly subtle: a team named the Portland Fire has gotten hot.
Ten games into its second incarnation, Portland appears willing to torch its security blanket of expansion immunity. As the league enters month two of season 30, the Fire has blazed a 6-4 start that serves as the best 10-game opening for an expansion club since the 1998 Detroit Shock.
Fire Flushes Fever in Fantastic Fourth Win in Last Five
Portland is currently engaged in a streak of four wins in its last five, and the most recent entry may be its most emphatic yet.
On Saturday, Portland posted a 100-84 victory over an Indiana Fever group many expect to contend for a title. The Fire led by as much as 26 points before Indiana made things somewhat respectable in the final frame. That, however, wasn't enough to prevent Portland from avenging a 90-73 defeat in Indianapolis ten days prior.
"I think, if I was watching this game and I'd never seen us play before, I'd be a new fan," analyzed Fire forward Emily Engstler after the win. "I think we play with such intensity and grit, I feel like I'm at the park but a lot more ... disciplined. Like a gritty, ballpark group of girls, but with a lot more discipline.
"What was the one example? I'm guarding [Aliyah] Boston coming up the court, and I just feel this wind, and it's Carla [Leite] coming behind for a steal. I don't know, I feel like that's something you can't teach. I think it's really impressive that we're able to bring energy like that every time we play."
A perfect game from Megan Gustafson (8-of-8 from the field) set the tone in her first start of the season. Double-doubles for Engstler and Leite proved to be vicious vaccines against the Fever, and Engstler would head up an equally effective defensive effort on the other end. Face of the league Caitlin Clark, for example, fell victim to a suffocating 1-of-7 outing.
Though officially stationed sixth on the premature WNBA playoff bracket, the Fire could lead the league in style points when it comes to their accumulated victories: Portland previously picked up two wins against the New York Liberty (including the first in rebooted franchise history via Sarah Ashlee Barker's buzzer-beating putback on May 12) and also prevailed in the first battle of 2026 rookies, trashing Toronto by a 99-80 final in Ontario.
"After the first game against Indiana, I didn't feel very good about myself. I felt like I didn't prepare the team well enough to succeed," head coach Alex Sarama said. "We had no solutions against the switching. I just said to the team [that] I've seen a team punish or pick apart a switching defense better than that my whole career. The level of detail and execution was just incredible on both ends, I'd say ... Just so impressed by the group."
Is There Fuel to This Fire?
The Golden State Valkyries reached the playoffs in last year's maiden voyage, perhaps removing a little bit of luster from seeing an expansion team linger among the contenders.
Portland is nonetheless forging one of the most intriguing stories of this landmark campaign, and whether the team can keep this momentum rolling will be one of the top headlines as the season shifts into summer.
The upcoming Commissioner's Cup slate would perhaps serve as another throat-clearing gesture: Portland is tied with the Minnesota Lynx for most wins in the conference, but the in-season competition has often been a training ground for the league's not-ready-for-primetime players. The Liberty and Las Vegas Aces used it as a prelude to fall festivities, while a Clark-less Fever group left a lasting impression in the most recent staging.
A few glances at the Fire's ledgers reveal several shortcomings buried by the early thrill of victory. Portland ranks 11th among the 15 teams in defensive rating and is negative in net entering this week's action. They place in the same spot in turnover and assist percentage, and are dead last in the more conventional department of rebounding.
Such stats suggest their destiny is more likely to settle in the hearts of those seeking a cult classic rather than a championship. But this hodgepodge of assorted veterans—even their primary freshmen are of the Rookie In Name Only variety thanks to the international endeavors of Freida Buhner and Teja Oblak—seems fully content with such a fate, all while they seek to keep the opening embers burning.
The Portland Fire beat Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever, 100-84
— Ballislife Bets (@BallislifeBets) May 31, 2026
Portland was a 11.5-point underdog 👀 pic.twitter.com/CirteSFD3D
Fire, Fighters
Sarama drew attention to a different brand of ledgers after Saturday's win, ones that could inch toward the more sustainable. Taking a page from British association football, Sarama noted that certain stats suggest that his squad doesn't skip cardio day.
"We're leading the W in sprint speed, de-cel speed, intensity metrics, and jumps," the Surrey native noted. "I think a lot of that is why we have to be specific with our rotations ... It's incredible, the drop-off between us and the second team. It's insane with the numbers.
"Typically, what you see [in] those performance metrics, you see a gradual decline throughout the game. What we've found is, just through the great job our performance team is doing, when we get to that fourth quarter, there's much less of a decline than what the average trend would be in the league. So we're going to keep doubling down on what we're doing in the performance, analytics space, and I think it's really helping us."
It's part of a plucky, if not pesky, brand of basketball that has come to define Portland's early endeavors.
This crowd is going CRAZY...
— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) May 31, 2026
The energy Portland brings for the Fire is insane. pic.twitter.com/27m8kGWbe8
Fire Thriving as Underdogs
Upon being plucked from the ranks of the unprotected, de facto Fire franchise face Bridget Carleton firmly declared that the new group wanted to be nothing if not "annoying" in their first trek forward, which was met with doubt after assembling the seasoned sets. That moniker has proven true ... at least outside of the Pacific Northwest ... in the very early going.
"We're a bunch of overlooked players, and I think we all have a chip on our shoulder," an emotional Gustafson analyzed after Saturday's win. "I've really never been respected as a basketball player until I've gotten here. So I'm thankful for this team, this organization. They really believe in me ... Just belief in each other and they really try to play to each other's strengths. The coaches see everybody's strengths, and they see what we can each improve on every single day in practices, so, yeah, just grateful."
If anything, Portland displayed that it could recover well from a prominent loss. Flushing the Fever came less than 24 hours after the Fire dropped an 86-66 decision to the Atlanta Dream.
Ironically enough, the Fire puts their scorching start on the line against their sisters in recent expansion on Tuesday. Commissioner's Cup group play opens in the Bay Area against the aforementioned Valkyries (7 p.m. PT, Rose City SportsNet).
Geoff Magliocchetti is on X @GeoffJMags
