The Portland Fire had their first ever collegiate draft on Monday night. After a coin flip decision with the fellow expanders in Toronto, the Fire were given the 7th overall pick, and while there would be familiar names available that late in the draft, when Portland’s turn came up, their decision left their fans in the stadium audibly deflated.

Let’s talk about it.

Here is the historic announcement of the Fire’s first ever pick. And the reaction in the room of the Draft Day event for the WNBA, seen above, felt very similar to the draft event held at the Moda Center, the home of the Portland Fire, which housed several hundred fans for the big day on Monday. When the pick was announced, there was a wave of unclear vocal responses followed by polite clapping. Portland fans had many expectations, and many preferred NCAA names in their minds, and they simply didn’t know who Iyana Martin Carrion was. It wasn’t what you wanted to hear.

Several dozen minutes later, the Fire had another draft pick, earned from Chicago in a transaction that was made to stop Portland from picking any of Chicago’s players in the expansion draft two Fridays ago. As Cathy Englebert, the WNBA commissioner, approached the podium to announce Portland’s second pick of the night, excitement turned back on. We all knew that Portland could, and likely would, pick an international player in the draft; that looks to be their modus operandi. Maybe this pick would be an NCAA player we fell in love with during the tournament.

First, however, Englebert had to announce a trade. The crowd at Moda, obviously, thought that it was going to involve the Fire, whose pick she was supposed to be announcing. Instead, the commissioner announced that the player that had just been selected was being traded for a pick that happened twenty minutes ago. It was a strange transaction that has a fascinating operational background, but what mattered in the stadium that night was that we were all left confused. Then, with barely a pause for the trade details to sink in, Englebert announced the Fire’s pick: Frieda Bühner, a German player currently playing in Spain.

Two picks, two question marks, three hours of waiting to have our fire of excitement extinguished.

I want to extend my gratitude and my sympathies to all of the fans who were at the stadium, including many of my friends, all of whom showed up to be a vocal supporter, and all of whom seemed to leave disappointed. I thought it was a really special event, even if it was a barebones production with limited returns.

To be honest, I left the stadium that night trying to think of how I could craft an argument to tell you that you shouldn’t have been disappointed, and that optimism is right in front of us for the taking. But I think that’s wrong. Not that optimism isn’t here waiting for us, but that I should try to convince anyone not to be disappointed.

We are new fans to a new product. Not just that, we are fans of the product of WNBA and NCAA basketball who are trying to be fans of a new iteration of that same product. We know basketball, we have players we love, we have opinions and wishes and hopes. Even the most supportive among us want to be treated to the reward of name recognition, of our viewing and fandom rewarded by having someone we already know and love join the team we already root for.

We want something to hold onto, something to recognize, something tangible.

And, so far, we haven’t had it at any point in this strange, first ever pre-season.

The off-season was taken away from the Fire and its fans for the Collective Bargaining Agreement holdout. The expansion draft was done behind closed doors, and essentially tweeted out at us. The Fire ownership and organization has had a remarkably slow roll-out of information, of amenities, of opportunities to engage locally.

You have every right to be disappointed, to be frustrated, to have lost some enthusiasm. You have hopes and dreams, and I doubt many of them have even been approached so far in the Fire’s short existence. I have certainly found myself losing steam at moments.

Now let me tell you why this Portland Fire project still makes my heart grow three sizes every day.

General Manager Vanja Cernevic has had a successful basketball career already, and it has spanned larger portions of the world than almost any other WNBA executive’s. She is aligned with head coach Alex Sarama, who is also able to execute his vision of growth and skill implementation and freedom and innovation. Sure, neither has proven that their visions can take them to the promised land in this particular league, but we get to experience something no one else has ever seen before, and we get to see it up close. We get to see something expansive, inclusive, something that bucks trends and conventions.

I spent most of my youth watching the Chicago Bulls and Chicago Bears and Chicago Cubs play by nothing but conventions as they slept-walked their sorry asses to losing records most years. This is not that. Even if it doesn’t work out right away, we have a timeline set out in front of us that is novel, and that I find deeply exciting.

And yeah, I don’t have the same vision as the Fire front-office. That’s my baggage to attend to. And better yet, I don’t have the burden of trying to attain my vision in reality. I get to enjoy someone else’s creativity and handy work. That’s a great place to be.

Some day soon I will come up with the anagram that I have always planned to explain what a real B.A.L.L. K.N.O.W.E.R. is, and it will absolutely include being open to learning, to discovering new strategies, to seeing the upsides of every player even when they fail to measure up to our typically relied-on analysis.

I want to be a B.A.L.L. K.N.O.W.E.R.. I want to close the gap between what I know today and what I need to know about this Fire roster for May, because that’s a big gap. And that gap is where I want to spend my life: the gap between not knowing, and finding out. I want to create spreadsheets, and watch YouTube videos of games in Ankara, Turkey from 2019 that have 27 total views, and to project performance and compare against reality and then reconfigure my projections, and to do all of that over and over and over again. That doesn’t have to be your version of enjoyment in your sports teams, but if you stay open to learning and changing, there will always be amusement and stimulation to be found.

Don’t close yourself off to what is unfamiliar, and what is possible.

Contrary to popular belief, the Portland Fire were not created to satisfy the hopes and dreams of myself, a straight white guy. Sitting at home, doing research and analysis, it can feel like I know best, that I’m in control, and that this product is meant to serve me, specifically.

Luckily, I’ve had two opportunities to go to the Moda Center with hundreds of other people who live in my community. It is in that stadium, in that venue for magic, that I get to let go of my silly notion of ownership, and I get to better understand my role of guardianship.

Littering the halls of the Moda Center for the draft and the season ticket selection have been who I think the real owners of this team: those who came before me, and those who will come after.

There are tons of O.G.’s coming to these events, and supporting the new iteration of a team they’ve already seen once before. They’ve still got the Jackie Stiles jerseys in pristine condition, decades of care being given to the name on the front and back. These are Portlanders whose team was taken from them, and finally have it back. It looks different, and much has changed, but they’re ball knowers, and this is still ball.

And buzzing around them as they return to the stadium are the heart of my motivations for this fandom: the kids.

These fine young humans are bringing exuberance and energy and interest into our sport, into our stadium, into our lives. They have nowhere to go but up, and they will be excited for whatever you tell them to be excited about. They are not ball knowers yet, but they can be given the tools and influences to start a journey of a life in sports, which is a life I have loved living.

But they will also listen to us when we bitch and moan, when we yell at the referees, when we make digs at the players who are on our team, when we leave games early to beat the traffic rather than take in the remaining bits of joy and intrigue that a blowout loss has to offer. They will hate whatever we show them to hate, and they will express that hatred however we show them to.

We all deserve to find joy in our local sports teams. Some of us are old enough that we should be able to do so, win or lose. Some of us aren’t. Who do we want the fans at the Moda Center to be? We have to be what we want them to see.

I know that we are missing the comfort of familiarity. But when has sports fandom ever felt comfortable? The luckiest sports fans alive are ones that will be losing five years of their life expectancy to the stresses of competing at the highest level. And yeah, sure, okay, the least fortunate sports fans will lose ten years to the stresses of mediocrity and mismanagement. Sports is not about familiarity, it’s about walking through hell, and living to tell about it, and it’s about not knowing what is going to happen moment to moment.

I hope that if you were left disappointed or confused after Monday’s draft, like me, that you can come back around to the glory that is having a WNBA team in Portland, whatever it may look like. I’m here to help you find the joy, and find the material to be the best and most rewarded fan you can be.

In the coming weeks before the two pre-season games start (on April 29th!), I have a couple of ideas planned:

Additionally, I hope to jump start some viewer-guided content, and to solicit questions and hopefully full thoughts and opinions from y’all. I always wanted this to be a back-and-forth, and a multiple-voice outlet.

I’ll be back in your inboxes soon.

Be well.