Women's National Basketball Association commissioner Cathy Engelbert is set to visit Portland for a chat with high-profile basketball stakeholders in Oregon as the league weighs expansion.
At least one lawmaker is pushing heavily for a new franchise in the Rose City. Senator Ron Wyden (D) of Oregon announced in a news release that Engelbert accepted his invitation to participate in a panel discussion on women’s sports during her visit on Monday, February 6.
Wyden says top Portland Trail Blazers and Portland Thorns executives will be among those contributing to the roundtable conversation, along with Oregon State University women's basketball coach Scott Rueck and University of Oregon women's basketball coach Kelly Graves, so Engelbert can see, "how our entire state has proven to be an epicenter for women’s sports."
A WNBA spokesperson confirmed Engelbert's planned attendance.
“I’m excited to visit Portland, a city with a great sports history and an incredible fanbase that has shown tremendous support and enthusiasm for women’s sports,” Engelbert said in the news release. “We continue to see a huge demand for the WNBA around the country, and the city of Portland is a perfect illustration of this. I’m looking forward to discussing the upward trajectory of the league and the momentum that women’s sports is currently experiencing and where it is headed.”
In September 2022, the commissioners of both the NBA and WNBA responded to Wyden and said Portland was being "actively" considered for a women's professional basketball franchise.
"My colleagues and I have spent a lot of time over the past several months studying expansion and exploring potential cities that would be a good fit to add a WNBA team. While we still have more work to do, please know that Portland is a market that we hold in high regard and are actively considering," Engelbert said in a written response to Wyden's letter.
The WNBA currently has 12 active franchises, including the Seattle Storm in the Pacific Northwest. The league hasn't added a new team since the Atlanta Dream joined in 2008.
Portland already had a short-lived WNBA franchise, the Portland Fire, which played three seasons at the then-Rose Garden. The team folded in 2002 after just three seasons (2000-2002) in the league.