The WNBA is increasing to Portland by granting the league’s fifteenth franchise to the town.
The workforce, which was introduced Wednesday, will start play in 2026 and be led by Lisa Bhathal Merage and Alex Bhathal, the homeowners of the NWSL’s Portland Thorns. The household additionally has ties to the NBA as Raj Bhathal, their father, is the principal co-owner of the Sacramento Kings and is majority proprietor Vivek Ranadive’s alternate on the league’s board of governors.
The workforce will play its house video games on the Moda Heart in downtown Portland, the place the NBA’s Path Blazers additionally play.
“We consider within the transformative energy of ladies’s sports activities and are thrilled that the W will name Portland house,” Lisa Bhathal Merage mentioned in an announcement. “We all know that Portland’s vibrant and various communities will extremely assist and rally round this workforce. Our purpose is to develop this group in partnership with the Portland neighborhood and we stay up for supporting one of the best girls’s basketball gamers on the planet after they take the ground on the Moda Heart in 2026.”
The @WNBA‘s fifteenth workforce calls the Rose Metropolis house.
🌹🏀 #WelcometotheW pic.twitter.com/7Qqf0igffW
— WNBA Portland (@wnbaportland) September 18, 2024
Portland beforehand had a WNBA workforce from 2000 to 2002. The Hearth, as they had been known as, had been owned by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Although they’d a loyal fan base, the group struggled with monetary losses and folded after three seasons.
Information of the Portland enlargement additionally comes after the town was beneath sturdy consideration by the WNBA to be the placement of its 14th franchise, which was later awarded to Toronto. A previous Portland bid for a WNBA workforce had been led by Kirk Brown, a rich businessman who had based the corporate that’s now known as ZoomInfo.
However such talks fell aside late within the course of, simply previous to a public announcement being made final fall.
In a letter final November to U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, which knowledgeable Wyden that consideration of the town within the league’s upcoming spherical of enlargement could be “deferred for now,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert wrote whereas it “grew to become clear that Portland is a perfect vacation spot for a WNBA franchise,” points associated to Moda Heart would stop Portland from getting a workforce instantly.
Engelbert later advised reporters at NBA All-Star Weekend final February “there’s positively extra to it. There’s at all times extra to it. It’s by no means one factor,” including, “it’s important to discover the proper long-term dedicated possession teams with the proper enviornment state of affairs.”
In February 2023, Engelbert visited Portland for an occasion centered round girls’s sports activities, led by Wyden. It was held at The Sports activities Bra, a Portland bar dedicated to girls’s sports activities, and had appearances from distinguished girls in sports activities from across the state.
That October, simply weeks earlier than Engelbert’s letter, Wyden expressed confidence in an interview with The Athletic about Portland’s possibilities of getting a WNBA workforce.
“What the commissioner noticed when she accepted my invitation to return to Oregon is, I believe, unprecedented within the nation,” he mentioned. “We mobilized, not simply the Geese and the Beavers and the Thorns and the Path Blazers and the like. We confirmed that enthusiasm for a workforce in our neighborhood is unprecedented.
“I believe that’s why when the ultimate scoreboard will get posted, we’re gonna win.”
In an announcement Wednesday, Engelbert known as the WNBA’s return to Portland “one other essential step ahead” for the league.
“Portland has been an epicenter of the ladies’s sports activities motion and is house to a passionate neighborhood of basketball followers,” Engelbert mentioned. “Pairing this power with the Bhathal household’s imaginative and prescient of main top-flight skilled sports activities groups will make sure that we ship a premier WNBA workforce to the higher Portland space.”
The Portland Hearth — and their mascot, Spot — performed three seasons within the WNBA from 2000 to 2002. (Sam Forencich / WNBAE / Getty Pictures)
Rose Backyard Report’s Sean Highkin, who first reported information concerning the Portland enlargement, mentioned that the Bhathals’ present relationship with the NBA gave them a major edge all through the method.
“It’s a basketball metropolis,” mentioned Phoenix Mercury coach Nate Tibbetts, who was an assistant coach with the Path Blazers from 2013 to 2021. “There’s not numerous skilled sports activities, I do know that they assist profitable groups and it’s an incredible place in the summertime, so I’ll positively stay up for going there. With the College of Oregon and Oregon State, and the historical past that they’ve with girls’s basketball, it’ll be positively a metropolis and a state that can assist it, which is superior.”
Final Could, the WNBA introduced its resolution to increase to Toronto. It can start play in that market in 2026.
In April, The Athletic first reported the WNBA meant to increase to 16 groups. Its thirteenth franchise, the Golden State Valkyries, is ready to start play subsequent season and have already got bought 17,000 season-ticket deposits, which they mentioned makes them the primary skilled girls’s sports activities workforce to move that mark.
GO DEEPER
WNBA enlargement Valkyries already eclipse 17K season ticket deposits
In April, Engelbert listed Philadelphia, Denver, Nashville, Tenn., and South Florida as different locations the league is exploring as choices for enlargement. The Athletic beforehand reported Charlotte, N.C., has additionally been in consideration.
“As potential possession teams clamber for a bit of the W, we anticipate to have extra information on the entrance within the coming months on enlargement, and the purpose stays what I mentioned at (final April’s WNBA Draft), to have 16 groups by no later than 2028,” Engelbert mentioned throughout July’s All-Star Weekend.
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(Picture: Steph Chambers / Getty Pictures)
