More than two decades after professional women's basketball last called Oregon home, the Fire were reborn for 2026, and it took only their second game to give Portland a night the city will not soon forget. A Moda Center crowd packed in to welcome the franchise back, and waiting on the other side was a daunting test: the New York Liberty, one of the league's original franchises and a 2024 champion built around the kind of star power that wins titles. Expansion teams are not supposed to trade punches with rosters like that, yet the Fire refused to blink. Bridget Carleton poured in a career-high 26 points and Carla Leite added 21, including the late layup that knotted the score at 96 and set the stage for the finish. When the would-be game-winner from beyond the arc came up empty, Sarah Ashlee Barker was the one who refused to let the chance die, crashing the glass and laying in the rebound a heartbeat before the buzzer to send the building into bedlam. The 98-96 victory was the first for this incarnation of the Fire, a milestone the players celebrated in a pile at midcourt as confetti rained down. For a fan base that waited 24 years to cheer a team of its own again, it was the kind of beginning legends are built on, proof that the Fire had returned to the WNBA to compete.
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