The WNBA is increasing to Portland by way of granting the league’s fifteenth franchise to the town.
The crew, which was once introduced Wednesday, will start play games in 2026 and be led by way of Lisa Bhathal Merage and Alex Bhathal, the house owners of the NWSL’s Portland Thorns. The public additionally has ties to the NBA as Raj Bhathal, their father, is the fundamental co-owner of the Sacramento Kings and is majority proprietor Vivek Ranadive’s trade at the league’s board of governors.
The crew will play games its house video games on the Moda Heart in downtown Portland, the place the NBA’s Path Blazers additionally play games.
“We believe in the transformative power of women’s sports and are thrilled that the W will call Portland home,” Lisa Bhathal Merage mentioned in a commentary. “We know that Portland’s vibrant and diverse communities will highly support and rally around this team. Our goal is to grow this organization in partnership with the Portland community and we look forward to supporting the best women’s basketball players in the world when they take the floor at the Moda Center in 2026.”
The @WNBA‘s fifteenth crew screams the Rose Town house.
#WelcometotheW pic.twitter.com/7Qqf0igffW
— WNBA Portland (@wnbaportland) September 18, 2024
Portland up to now had a WNBA crew from 2000 to 2002. The Hearth, as they had been known as, had been owned by way of the past due Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Although they’d a faithful fan bottom, the group struggled with monetary losses and folded next 3 seasons.
Information of the Portland growth additionally comes next the town was once beneath robust attention by way of the WNBA to be the positioning of its 14th franchise, which was once nearest awarded to Toronto. A future Portland bid for a WNBA crew have been led by way of Kirk Brown, a rich businessman who had based the corporate this is now known as ZoomInfo.
However such talks fell aside past due within the procedure, simply previous to a folk announcement being made extreme fall.
In a letter extreme November to U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, which knowledgeable Wyden that attention of the town within the league’s later spherical of growth could be “deferred for now,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert wrote pace it “became clear that Portland is an ideal destination for a WNBA franchise,” problems alike to Moda Heart would prohibit Portland from getting a crew immediately.
Engelbert nearest told reporters at NBA All-Star Weekend last February “there’s definitely more to it. There’s always more to it. It’s never one thing,” including, “you have to find the right long-term committed ownership groups with the right arena situation.”
In February 2023, Engelbert visited Portland for an tournament targeted round girls’s sports activities, led by way of Wyden. It was once held at The Sports activities Bra, a Portland bar trustworthy to girls’s sports activities, and had appearances from eminent girls in sports activities from across the circumstance.
That October, simply weeks sooner than Engelbert’s letter, Wyden expressed self assurance in an interview with The Athletic about Portland’s possibilities of getting a WNBA crew.
“What the commissioner saw when she accepted my invitation to come to Oregon is, I think, unprecedented in the country,” he mentioned. “We mobilized, not just the Ducks and the Beavers and the Thorns and the Trail Blazers and the like. We showed that enthusiasm for a team in our community is unprecedented.
“I think that’s why when the final scoreboard gets posted, we’re gonna win.”
In a commentary Wednesday, Engelbert known as the WNBA’s go back to Portland “another important step forward” for the league.
“Portland has been an epicenter of the women’s sports movement and is home to a passionate community of basketball fans,” Engelbert mentioned. “Pairing this energy with the Bhathal family’s vision of leading top-flight professional sports teams will ensure that we deliver a premier WNBA team to the greater Portland area.”
The Portland Hearth — and their mascot, Spot — performed 3 seasons within the WNBA from 2000 to 2002. (Sam Forencich / WNBAE / Getty Photographs)
Rose Grassland Record’s Sean Highkin, who first reported news about the Portland expansion, mentioned that the Bhathals’ present dating with the NBA gave them a vital edge all over the method.
“It’s a basketball city,” mentioned Phoenix Mercury schoolmaster Nate Tibbetts, who was once an associate schoolmaster with the Path Blazers from 2013 to 2021. “There’s not a lot of professional sports, I know that they support winning teams and it’s a great place in the summer, so I’ll definitely look forward to going there. With the University of Oregon and Oregon State, and the history that they have with women’s basketball, it’ll be definitely a city and a state that will support it, which is awesome.”
Closing Would possibly, the WNBA introduced its determination to amplify to Toronto. It’s going to start play games in that marketplace in 2026.
In April, The Athletic first reported the WNBA supposed to amplify to 16 groups. Its thirteenth franchise, the Blonde Circumstance Valkyries, is about to start play games later season and have already got bought 17,000 season-ticket deposits, which they mentioned makes them the primary skilled girls’s sports activities crew to go that mark.
GO DEEPER
WNBA growth Valkyries already eclipse 17K season price tag deposits
In April, Engelbert indexed Philadelphia, Denver, Nashville, Tenn., and South Florida as alternative playgrounds the league is exploring as choices for growth. The Athletic up to now reported Charlotte, N.C., has additionally been in attention.
“As potential ownership groups clamber for a piece of the W, we expect to have more news on the front in the coming months on expansion, and the goal remains what I said at (last April’s WNBA Draft), to have 16 teams by no later than 2028,” Engelbert mentioned all the way through July’s All-Megastar Weekend.
Required studying
(Photograph: Steph Chambers / Getty Photographs)
