Sports
WNBA shelves plans to expand to Portland – OregonLive
FILE – Commissioner Cathy Engelbert speaks at the WNBA basketball draft Monday, April 10, 2023, in New York. Engelbert visited Portland in February and attended a rally at the Sports Bra where sports leaders around the state pitched Portland as the site for WNBA expansion. Portland was expected to be added as the league's 14th franchise before talks with millionaire Kirk Brown broke down at the 11th hour. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger, File)AP
The WNBA has shelved its plans to launch an expansion team in Portland, unexpectedly pumping the brakes on efforts to bring professional women’s basketball back to Portland for the first time in more than two decades.
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert confirmed the news, first reported by The Oregonian/OregonLive, in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden on Wednesday, saying plans had been “deferred” despite Portland being identified as “an ideal destination for a WNBA franchise.”
In her letter, Engelbert cited plans for renovations to Moda Center, the home of the Trail Blazers, as a sticking point. She said the renovations, “anticipated to take place during consecutive summers,” had led to the decision to hold off on expanding to Portland “until the timing and scope of arena improvements are settled.”
While the Blazers have not revealed specific plans for Moda Center renovations, a source close to those discussions said Engelbert’s letter came as a “surprise” to the franchise’s leaders.
The source said Blazers chair Jody Allen had agreed to push back plans for a major overhaul to the arena originally slated for 2026 until 2027 to ensure that the WNBA team would play multiple seasons at Moda Center before being displaced for what was expected to be one season.
The WNBA season is in the summer, during the NBA’s offseason.
Earlier this year, WNBA officials visited Veterans Memorial Coliseum, owned by the city of Portland, to assess whether it would be a suitable temporary home for a WNBA franchise and, the source said, had been working with the city on upgrades to the 63-year-old building, including WNBA-ready locker rooms.
If nothing else, that level of specificity illustrates how close the WNBA came to awarding a franchise to the Rose City before Engelbert’s about-face on Wednesday.
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert confirmed that the league was deferring plans to expand to Portland in this letter to Sen. Ron Wyden on Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023.Courtesy image
In February, Engelbert attended a rally at The Sports Bra in Northeast Portland coordinated by Wyden that brought together leaders from across the state’s sports landscape, including representatives of the Portland Trail Blazers, Portland Thorns and both Oregon and Oregon State’s women’s basketball teams.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Wyden said, “Sen. Wyden is committed to continue working hard with everybody in Portland who’s teaming up to bring our city and state a WNBA franchise.
“Portland and all of Oregon have long proven a hotbed for women’s sports, and he has no doubt the WNBA would succeed here in a similar fashion.”
Kirk Brown, the millionaire co-founder of the company that became ZoomInfo, went public last year with his plans to bring an expansion team to Portland, and since then Portland was seen as the leading candidate to become the league’s 14th team starting in 2025.
The WNBA expansion fee would have been $50 million, sources told The Oregonian/OregonLive.
It is not known to what extent, if at all, Brown remains involved in any efforts to get the discussions back on track or if that is even a possibility. A representative for the millionaire declined to comment earlier in the week and did not respond to follow-up messages Wednesday.
Multiple sources told The Oregonian/OregonLive that there have been other people interested in forming a new ownership group with hopes of salvaging the city’s bid, but it is unclear how viable those efforts might be — particularly if the root issue is actually the Blazers’ Moda Center renovations.
Fans gather outside the Moda Center for photos before the Portland Trail Blazers open the 2023-24 NBA season against the Orlando Magic in Portland, Oregon on Friday, Oct. 27, 2023. WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert cited Moda Center renovation plans as a sticking point in the WNBA's decision to shelve plans to add an expansion team in Portland.Sean Meagher/The Oregonian
On Oct. 5, the WNBA announced that an expansion team would begin play in San Francisco starting in 2025 and Engelbert said that more expansion was on the immediate horizon. At the time, Portland was widely seen as the favorite and, in fact, sources close to the situation told The Oregonian/OregonLive that the decision to expand to Portland had been made pending final details, including use of the Moda Center as the team’s home arena.
Dewayne Hankins, the Blazers’ president of business operations, has spoken generally about plans to renovate Moda Center and make it an attractive venue for an NBA All-Star Game by the end of the decade, but the team has not announced specific plans for the renovation while it continues to negotiate its lease of the building from the city of Portland. The lease expires in 2025.
Portland has not been home to a WNBA team since 2002, when the Portland Fire folded after three seasons.
Since then, Portland has emerged as a global leader in women’s sports. In addition to being home to the Thorns, one of the most successful women’s sports teams in the world, both the UO and OSU women’s basketball teams have become national powers and have both reached the NCAA Final Four in recent years.
The Thorns annually led the National Women’s Soccer League in attendance before Angel City FC in Los Angeles joined the league last year. The Thorns drew 18,918 fans per game this season, third in the NWSL. The Fire, which was owned by Paul Allen, drew an average 8,500 fans per game, which would have ranked fourth in the 12-team WNBA last season.
Earlier this week, WNBA All-Star Sabrina Ionescu, who was the Naismith Player of the Year in 2020 for the Ducks, said at an unveiling of a new court at a local Boys & Girls Club that she had been pushing for Portland to land an expansion team.
“What we’ve been able to do here (in Oregon),” Ionescu said, “and what professional sports have been able to do in the city of Portland, we’re continuing to push for more.”
Despite the setback, Engelbert made it clear that the door was not permanently closed on WNBA expansion in Portland.
“When the time is right,” she wrote, “we look forward to pursuing prospects for bringing the WNBA to Portland.”
— Jeff Manning of The Oregonian/OregonLive contributed to this report.
— Bill Oram; boram@oregonian.com
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