A starting rotation substitution, disappointing officiating, the most turnovers in franchise history, and a 20 point loss. And yet, I thought this game was awesome. If you haven’t been to a game at the Moda Center, you simply must.

Let’s talk about it.

These are an old set of standardized “only stats that matter”. Here’s a fun explainer video from Molly Brown on Instagram, who is going to be a great follow for any fan of my writing here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXusixFkrAA/

On Friday morning we all, I’m sure, were surprised to see that Bridget Carleton, Sarah Ashlee Barker, and Teja Oblak were all listed as questionable for Friday’s game. All three played, and played well, against Connecticut on Wednesday, and none appeared limited or injured. There’s a possibility that the team is front-loading some rest in the first game of a back-to-back before playing Indiana tonight: Alex Sarama mentioned in the pre-game press-conference that they will be taking an abundance of caution in this stretch of tough/frequent games. (I didn’t know Sarama was an Abundance guy*)

At gametime, it was decided that Bridget Carleton and Teja Oblak would not be playing. That means there was an opening in the starting 5, and the swap that the Fire made was not what I was expecting: Holly Winterburn, a combo guard that hasn’t played real minutes in over a week, made the first start of her W career.

Before talking about what actually mattered in this game, I simply must say: the referees were not very good. They were missing calls all over the place, they called three pretty weak technical fouls on two players chirping at them, and then one against the Atlanta bench(?), and called a very lop-sided game: Atlanta shot 19 free throws from shooting fouls, Portland shot 6. This was not the reason Portland lost, but it certainly didn’t help. When I have a realization that referees never look at the replay monitor in the arena because they don’t want to see if they made the right call or not, then the officials are drawing too much attention to themselves.

Basketball-wise, the Portland Fire lost this game. The Dream didn’t play like champions, but they did make good on Portland handing opportunities to them: the Fire had 28 turnovers, the most in the league since July 5th 2024, and only the 32nd time ever that a team has had 28+ turnovers in the league’s 30 year history. They had 14 in the first half, 14 in the second, spreading the wealth to Atlanta in every segment of the game. Playing with a rookie starter and playing without a backup point guard is going to hurt your turnover/assist ratio, but Portland simply cannot be this bad: they threw 5+ bounce passes to no one, they threw it into the stands once, they made great passes in the pick-and-roll only to have Atlanta just simply take it out of their hands (three times!). It was, frankly, some of the worst moments the Fire have had all season.

Other than near-record breaking turnovers, the Fire had a decent night: they generated a ton of open three’s that they should have hit more of: 9-of-27 (33%). They had 18 assists on 25 made shots. Their defense was good: 4 blocks and 4 steals, and the opponent shot 44% from the field, 30% from three. Sarah Ashlee Barker continues to produce at any and every moment of games: 14 points on 67% shooting. She also continues to make every single home game a great time: she is clearly the crowd’s favorite player, gets an uproarious applause when she checks into the game off the bench, and is simply fearless and strong as hell, battling her way to points and rebounds by sheer will. Portland really loves her.

Emily Engstler got 3 more blocks along with 10 points, Holly Winterburn threw 7 assists, and Meg Gustafson scored in double digits again off the bench (10 points for her).

There was an absolute battle all night between Carla Leite and Atlanta’s Jordin Canada. Canada was a dog of a defender last night, and seemed empowered by the referees not calling any fouls against her team. Leite took just 4 shots in the game, her lowest mark of the season in a game she’s started. She hit her 1 three-point attempt, as she remains empowered from distance after that clutch shot against Stewie in New York, but otherwise was thrown off her game.

Atlanta played a middle-of-the-road game for themselves, with Rhyne Howard hitting some big shots to make sure the Dream took care of business. Naz Hillmon missed 8 of her 9 three point attempts, but otherwise was a huge contributor for the visitors: 14 points, 7 rebounds, 5 steals (!!!), 4 assists. Angel Reese got her double-double, and had her usual bad turnovers, and also took 3 three pointers that, yes, she missed, but she caught and shot them quickly and in rhythm – that’ll be a big pressure release valve if she can start hitting those.

Atlanta was absolutely cooking the Fire in transition — when the Fire missed a shot and Atlanta got the rebound, or when Atlanta got a steal, the Dream would push the ball down the court quickly which created mismatches and cross-matches that the Fire could not defend. This is less of a problem when Bridget Carleton, a great defender who has size for her position, is playing instead of Winterburn, but this is also a problem that the Fire can address and solve for. There is a defensive switch called the scram switch that the Fire don’t do at all, and they really need to.

A scram switch happens when an opposing big is guarded by a much smaller guard (like Angel Reese being guarded by Carla Leite, which was the case several times last night). The defending team then has one of their own bigs who is on the weak side/far side of the court come over and take on the opposing big while sending the guard off to guard someone closer to their size. They literally come over and say “scram!” to their smaller teammate. Emily Engstler and Luisa Geiselsoder and even Nyadiew Puoch need to be looking for these more often.

Here’s an old, not that great MNBA video showing the switch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-U5Lxj8o6Y

Portland is clearly tuned into load management: they left a group of 5 in during the fourth quarter Dream avalanche that created more rest for most of the starters, and balanced the Fire’s playing time across the board. Portland only had one player log more than 24 minutes (Holly Winterburn, who started but also was the second unit point guard for the night), while Atlanta had four starters play more than 30 minutes. 

Portland has made significant line-up changes in the last two games, and I am expecting more. Tonight’s were mostly in response to injuries, but two trends continue: Luisa Geiselsoder’s minutes being replaced by Meg Gustafson’s and Serah Williams’, and another one that I have yet to write about: Nyadiew Puoch, who started again but played just 17 minutes, her lowest outside of the first game of the season. Puoch has been struggling to create good offensive moments when the ball finds her, missing shots or turning it over, and that trend seems to be worsening. Freida Bühner got real minutes for the second game in a row, and Karlie Samuelson played 19 minutes, but again failed to provide a noticeable impact. I’m betting we see more shifts today against the Fever.

The rare 0 steal/0 block game from SAB, but she continues to be the Fire’s second (...or first…) best one-on-one bucket getter. She fought her way deep into the paint two or three times to get tough as hell layups, and hit two huge pull-up three’s. She and Gustafson were the only sparks on offense, both coming off the bench. She is also the only player outside of Carla Leite who will attack the paint and potentially draw fouls, which is why the Fire shoot so few free-throws, but the whistle, as we noted, was not on the Fire’s side: 0 FTA’s for SA this game.

A loss to a great team with very fixable mistakes is far from the worst result Portland could have received in this one, especially playing without two high-usage players. The Fire were down just 6 points after three quarters, as this game was winnable (before Atlanta did what the Fire have been doing lately: score a bazillion points in the 4th quarter). Their struggles and rotations in this game flow directly into tonight’s game, the team’s first ever back-to-back, so the story of the weekend isn’t over yet. How does the team respond?

*did even a single person get this joke?

Have questions? Submit them through the link below, and I’ll answer them periodically!

Points per Possession - how many points a team scores for every possession they have

Effective Field-Goal Percent (eFG%) - field goal percentage with weight added to three-point shots

Turnover Percent (TOV%) - percent of possessions that ended in a turnover

Offensive Rebound Percent (OREB%) - percent of a team’s own misses that they rebounded

Free-Throw Attempt Rate (FTA Rate) - how many free throws a team takes for each Field Goal attempted