Portland’s WNBA team has been up to some things, none of which have been officially announced through franchise channels, none of which have been particularly inspiring. Let’s check in on the turbulent start to our Hot Expansion Summer.
On Tuesday, April 1st, 2025, the ownership group of the new Portland WNBA franchise announced the hiring of Inky Son as the new Team President for their burgeoning business.
Less than 90 days later, the same group announced that Son and the franchise have parted ways.
Son, a veteran of the sports, business, and fashion industries, seemed like a great hire. She was coming from a role as Chief Administrative Officer for the National Basketball Player’s Association, the union that represents the players in the NBA. What better experience could you want for your team than someone with basketball business knowledge catered to improving and protecting players’ experiences? The WNBA’s announcement read: “Son will oversee all aspects of the business, including marketing, ticket and sponsorship sales, community relations, finance, legal, and human resources. She will be responsible for establishing the infrastructure and culture of the team and hiring across all verticals.” Sounds pretty important!
Initially, reports claimed that Son was fired. A few days later, in a joint statement from Son and RAJ Sports, it was said that Son made the decision to leave. RAJ Sports thanked Son for her “brief but impactful tenure”.
RAJ Sports have replaced Son, on an interim basis, with former Nike executive Clare Hamill, who was the VP of women’s business before retiring last year.
Note: a day after initially writing this post, The Portland WNBA team announced the interim president hire on Instagram.
And that’s it. That is all of the information we have been given. And that sucks!
Charting the path of the team so far, things have been uneven at best:
The team failed to earn an expansion bid in 2023 when it seemed like a sure thing, the deal falling apart in the last minutes when tech billionaire Kirk Brown backed out of the deal.
RAJ Sports, who owns the Sacramento Kings and Portland Thorns, got the deal done in 2024. No employees were announced, and no name or logo was revealed.
The first real announcement was made on April 1st, when Inky Son was named Team President. This was six months after the announcement that Portland was awarded a team. That’s six months of dead time in which there was no one leading the business.
In the three months that have followed, the only announcement the team has made is … it is going to make an announcement on July 15th regarding the team’s name.
Days before the announcement of Son’s firing/departure, people discovered that the WNBA had filed trademarks for ‘Portland Fire’, hinting that the franchise would reclaim the city’s old team name.
Days after their probable name being leaked, and after no substantial news being made, the team fired/parted ways with its only publicly known employee, Inky Son.
Let’s compare this path to the Toronto Tempo’s, another new franchise that was announced on the same day as Portland’s, and will start their season on the same day as Portland.
September 2024: Teams announced; Toronto already has a team president
December 5th, 2024: Toronto’s first big announcement - team name, team logo/colors
February 20th, 2025: Toronto announces the hiring of its General Manager Monica Wright Rogers
April 1st, 2025: Portland announces hiring of president Inky Son
May 30th, 2025: Toronto hires an assistant GM
June 5th, 2025: Toronto announces the launch of its “Together We Will Win” platform, which focuses on accessibility and inclusivity for fans of all identities.
June 23rd, 2025: Inky Son announces on her LinkedIn page that the Portland team has hired a Social Media Manager
June 26th, 2025: Portland announces 10,000 pre-sale tickets have been sold
June 27th, 2025: Portland fires/parts ways with its Team President
Note: If you want to see all of those news stories, you can go to https://www.wnba.com/news and select the Toronto Tempo team page. You can not select the Portland team page, because it does not exist.
The Portland team still does not have a General Manager, the person who makes all of the basketball team-making decisions, nor a coach, who makes the on-court decisions. According to Sean Highkin of the Rose Garden Report, sources have said “The Bhathals, with help from CAA, have been conducting interviews for (a General Manager) in recent weeks, and sources familiar with the process say candidates have been left confused about the direction of the organization.” And, according to Annie Costabile at Front Office Sports (a source I’ve never heard of before today, so I’m taking this with some skepticism), “One source indicated the Portland franchise is struggling with its GM search, telling FOS multiple candidates have turned down the position.”
The 2026 WNBA Expansion Draft, which will be the first time that the Portland – and Toronto – franchise can acquire players, does not have a date. The 2025 expansion draft was held on December 6th. Assuming a similar timeframe, that means Portland will start picking its first ever players in five months. Can an ownership group that lives in Southern California, and already owns two other sports franchises, hire an entire business with adequate time to train, to cohere, to scout an entire league, and to feel prepared to launch a sports team, in that amount of time?
Putting on the Glasses
I named this publication Rose-Colored Buckets because I want to, as much as possible, keep rose-colored glasses on when discussing this team and its future. I don’t want doom, I want bloom.
Yes, things look bad. No, things have not yet gone well. Yes, many fans and writers are strongly pushing back against the use of the “Fire” legacy name because of the dangerous and violent state of physically living in Oregon in the era of mass wildfires.
I honestly do not have concrete evidence to point towards that would absolutely make me, or you, feel better about this situation. I do, however, have a lifetime of sports fandom experience that allows me to choose a path of positivity and support in a moment like this, for one simple fact: ownership and team management in sports has always been filled with unqualified personnel, bad faith actors, penny-pinchers, and pure dummies. And yet here we are, sports fans all of us.
This is not to say that I think RAJ Sports are any of those things above. They are shooting 50% from the field with the successes and failures of their two other sports franchises (Thorns: good! Kings: not good!) and this new launch has been unequivocally poor. It’s hard to judge how they will operate this WNBA team, because they haven’t really operated it at all yet.
And while ownership is the biggest competitive advantage in sports, it is not why we come to them. We don’t root for billionaires, we root for the people on the court, and the people in the stands, and the people staffing the games. We care about the community that is built around the spectacle, not the business owners looking to diversify their portfolios.
The league is in an amazing state of recombobulation and success, of growth happening too slowly (good players are being cut) and growth happening too suddenly (see: the nastiness of new, rabid fans). The most recent WNBA expansion team, the Golden State Valkyries, had a chaotic roster-based start filled with signing and releasing players – a trend that has continued up until this very week – but have found a loyal fanbase and genuine on-court success through all the turmoil. Did they hire good people on a reasonable time table and have a plan in place for more than five months? Yes. Can we still look to their experience as an example of what could be possible in Portland? Yes.
While we can’t control what goes on behind the scenes of our upcoming local basketball team, we can control what happens in the room where the players perform: we can show up, we can be outwardly supportive, and we can advocate for the best experiences for the players and for the fans.
I hope all this doom doesn’t cloud your bloom. Next spring is still just around the corner.