The Portland Fire have played their first ever (unofficial) pro game as a reborn franchise. The scoreboard tells one story, the stats tell another, and the vibes tell a third. Let’s talk about it.

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

The excitement of opening the season at home, playing in the first women’s professional basketball game in Portland in over 20 years, was dampened in pre-season game two when the Fire turned the ball over 8 times and were called for 9 fouls in the opening ten minutes of the game. It was also defused by a frustrating bag policy that I’ll be talking about in my next entry (warning to people going to the Moda Center for the season opener this Saturday!). After that wonky first quarter, the team responded really well, and it was an even game afterwards.

The injuries to the Fire roster were not helpful, either to the performance in the game or for evaluating the team as the deadline for roster decisions grows ever closer. The injuries meant that pure rookies Jordan Harrison, Serah Williams, and Frieda Buhner had to play big minutes against the Sparks starters, which is always going to be a struggle. Harrison and Williams also responded well in the second half, Williams especially with 9 points and 8 rebounds in her final 12 minutes of play.

The starting group — Carleton (in her first game), Jones, Puoch, Leite, and Geiselsöder — flashed creativity and style and pace, but mostly looked like a group that has only scrimmaged for two hours together playing against a team with a lot of returners on it in the Sparks.

I wish that Freida Bühner, the German rookie who is currently slotted in as a Development Player for the Fire, and Chloe Bibby, the second year forward out of Australia, were able to find more opportunities for themselves in this game. Bibby is a great and prolific shooter, but had just one shot attempt in almost 16 minutes. Bühner was 1-of-6 from the field in 20 minutes, and struggled to find her spots. Both are good at moving the ball and moving into the second options when their primary looks are unavailable, which helped the team on Sunday, and I think both will have good season this year once they have more than just two practices this year.

The playbook remains really simple for the Fire. They run some screens on the wings to start the offense, but it’s a lot of vibes and pick-and-rolls and “go do your thing” happening. Defensively, there is still a defined pick-and-roll coverage that sometimes creates disruption, and sometimes creates wide-open layups for the opponent (working on an explanation of that coverage to come soon).

Another fixable problem reared its head in this game. On Sunday it was rebounding, particularly allowing the opposing Seattle Storm to get a ton of offensive rebounds. Last night, it was transition defense: I counted 4 times in the first half that Los Angeles got the basketball down the court to an open player under the Fire rim before any Portland players were there. They won the 90 foot race after a Portland possession in ways that one would think would happen once, and never again. Not the case last night. Even worse, two (or more) of these occurrences happened after Portland scored a basket. That means that Los Angeles picked up the ball, took it out of bounds, passed it in bounds, and then got the ball 90 feet down the court to a player for a layup before a Fire player was back there to defend it. All things are forgivable in the pre-season, but that is the least forgivable offense for a team that wants to seriously compete. Good thing this was a pre-season game.

There is a fascinating and frustrating combination of bad fouls by players and soft foul calls by officials occurring in most WNBA pre-season games I have watched this season, and definitely in both Fire games. I do not want to shy away from the fact the this Portland team is committing a lot of fouls in spaces that they never should, which feels to me like a combination of jitters, nerves, too much energy, and sometimes a lack of clarity in direction – this team has a very shallow playbook, and wants players to learn how to adapt and react to new and naturally occurring scenarios, and they are going to have non-ideal reactions for a little while. At the same time, bodying up on defense has been a foul every time, moving screens are being called 500% more than they ever do in regular season games, and flow has rarely been established in these two games without a whistle to slow things down.

This is, just like game one, not even close to what we should expect from the Portland Fire this season. Four players were injured and unavailable for this game; Carleton, Bibby, and Buhner have had two practices before jumping into these real games, and Buhner has never played in a W game before this pre-season game. Sug Sutton and Karlie Samuelson have yet to play a game (as well as a couple of other players which I’m not confident in making the team). Literally the entire season is still in front of us, and no team has had to deal with the same amount of hardships that Portland has had to deal with in terms of a shortened pre-season, international player timelines, and injuries. They are in a uniquely difficult position, and I think they are handling it really well. I remain completely excited for the real season to begin, and I still don’t believe this team will perform as poorly as the scoreboard and stat sheets have shown so far.

It is evident through two games that when Puoch is on the floor for the Portland Fire, their defense is way better. Her length bothers the opponent at the point of attack and in the passing lanes when Puoch is guarding someone without the ball. The Sparks passes were just generally poor when Puoch was on the floor, even if the Fire didn’t generate actual turnovers.

On the other side, Pouch confidently splashed two of her three 3-point attempts, and is otherwise catching passes and moving quickly, keeping the offense in flow. She seems to be the ideal player for Portland’s systems and styles, and in her rookie season, she is showing that she can positively affect winning, even in two sloppy losses.

A sloppy first quarter tainted an otherwise fun and exciting and positive game. This team is putting together games that look like how they want to be playing, and when they ease into this new experience, they will loosen up, shoot better, turn the ball over less, and be competitive. Their numbers are good if they cut out the very fixable mistakes. I am, as coach Alex Sarama has consistently said, very encouraged.

Speaking of coach Sarama, he was asked in the post-game presser how he and the players felt about playing at home for the very first time. His response, I thought, was spot on. Take a listen:

Four Factors

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 Rate (FTRate) - how many free throws a team makes per 100 possessions