PORTLAND, Ore. — When the WNBA announced last year it would bring a professional women’s team back to Portland, Loree Leonard bought the best seats she could. Leonard, 63, was a “die-hard” women’s sports fan long before such a thing was even vaguely mainstream, and she had waited a quarter of a century for this opportunity.
She’d supported women’s pro basketball before there was a WNBA. And she’d watched in frustration in 2002 when the fledgling Portland Fire was rejected by Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder and owner of the NBA’s Trail Blazers, who declined to buy the Fire. The team folded before any of its players ever scored 1,000 points.
That loss “was always so hard to stomach,” Leonard said.
Even 25 years ago, Portland was “a huge market,” Leonard thought, but it was a different town, and the WNBA a different league the last time the Fire played. There was no Salt and Straw ice cream franchise, no gentrified Williams Avenue a few blocks from the arena. The league had Sheryl Swoopes and Lisa Leslie, but it didn’t have widespread support. The head of ESPN didn’t want the games on his network. You could see the Fire for just a few bucks.
Tickets for Saturday night’s game against the Chicago Sky started at $55 and topped out north of $800. Fans bought all 19,355 of them — a WNBA record for a team’s first game.
By 4:30, an hour and a half before tip-off, every parking spot was taken, and most of the bike rack spots were, too. A mile and a half away, customers spilled onto the sidewalk at the Sports Bra, the nation’s first women’s-only sports bar. Snagging a seat is as difficult as pinning down a reservation for Kann, a Haitian restaurant that consistently earns a spot on best-in-the-country lists.
Even the train from the suburbs was standing room only when Leonard and her partner, Carol Duffy, boarded in Hillsboro. They chatted with fans who were too young to remember the old team, and they told everyone they could about a professional women’s softball team coming to the area soon.
When the train stopped at the Rose Quarter, the couple couldn’t believe their eyes. The lines into Moda Center were long, and the courtyard outside was full. Kids waited to have their faces painted. Trail Blazers guard Jrue Holiday played Horse with fans, and U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D) — a driving force behind the Fire’s return — snapped selfies with dozens of people.
Back in the days before the WNBA, when Leonard had season tickets for the American Basketball League’s Portland Power, a fan could see every women’s game for less than $200 a year. This time, Leonard and Duffy paid $5,300 for season tickets. Finally, Leonard thought as she made her way inside, their town was seeing what she and Duffy had always felt was true: Women’s sports are an exciting spectacle worthy of big crowds, if only the powers that be market them right.
“We supported the women, we supported the teams, but nobody else did,” Leonard said. “You watch now, I think it’s hysterical, they are advertising the NBA games during the girls’ games.”
The couple grabbed drinks and adjusted the firefighter hats they’d worn to “bring the passion,” then they slipped through the throng and found their seats. The arena went dark. Flames blasted up to the rafter from the backboards, and the crowd rose with a roar.
“This is more than just a basketball game,” small forward Bridget Carleton told the crowd when the lights went back up. “It’s a new chapter for this city, for women’s basketball and for every fan who helped bring the Fire back to life.”
Carleton handed off the microphone, then took her position for the tip-off. The Sky came away with the ball. The crowd chanted DEFENSE, and the game was on.
A minute went by without a basket, but the fans didn’t seem to notice. They lost their minds after French point guard Carla Leite hit a lefthanded scoop off the backboard, and when Luisa Geiselsoder, the Fire’s 6-foot-4 center, nailed a three-pointer to tie the game at 5-5, the crowd roared as if it had already won.
This iteration of the team may have been new, but the fans were seasoned. They taunted the refs. They booed Skylar Diggins at the line. They did the wave far longer than necessary, but who cared? After 24 years, their Fire was back.
During a timeout, the Jumbotron showcased a Who’s Who of local celebrities — musician and actor Carrie Brownstein, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek in a Carleton jersey. The Portland Thorns filled a box with professional women’s soccer players, and Trail Blazers Donovan Clingan and Toumani Camara sat courtside with their girlfriends.
By halftime, the Fire was down 50-37, but when the R&B singer Ashanti appeared in shades, high heels and a leather jacket, even moms eager for a halftime beer stopped in their tracks. Ashanti was much bigger than the Fire in the early aughts. As she danced around half-court, seemingly every millennial in the place sang their hearts out to ”What’s Luv” and “Always on Time.”
Marylyn John is far from a millennial — she graduated from Portland’s David Douglas High School in 1970 — but she didn’t leave during halftime, either. Instead, she surveyed the crowd.
“The atmosphere was nothing like this,” John said of the original Fire. “It was exciting, but it wasn’t packed. This place is just full as it is for the Blazers.”
John pointed to a few friends. “Back then, it was just women like us,” she said — by which she meant lesbians. “Now look.”
There were still plenty of gay women — Portland has more lesbian couples per capita than any other city — but the crowd was far more diverse than the one John remembered from 25 years ago. Men wore “Everybody Watches Women’s Sports” T-shirts. Little kids showed off the faux gold chains their parents had bought for $29 in the team store. And preteen girls pretended to hit nothing but net all the way from their rafter seats.
The whole scene delighted John. When she was a teenager, she had to play three-on-three on a half court. There was no professional league to dream of. “These girls are going to have so many more opportunities than we did,” she said.
Back in row D, Leonard ate popcorn and stood for every made basket. The fourth quarter was light on points, but when the Jumbotron found Leonard in her firefighter hat, she pumped her fist and sang along with Icona Pop: “I don’t care! I love it!”
By the middle of the fourth, it was clear the Fire would not win. The crowd remained in place. They groaned when the ball bounced off the rim, and they went ballistic when Leite made a three with 18 seconds left.
As the final seconds ticked down, Leonard decided she would add bright lights to her hat before Tuesday’s match against the New York Liberty. The Fire lost 98-83, but Leonard and everyone else cheered loud and long for several minutes past the final buzzer.
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