Happy Wednesday, Ball-Knowers!

We’ve got some great content coming for you on the back end of this week and into the weekend. Tyler had ‘Boots on the Ground’ last night in Dallas for the Atlanta Dream’s win over the Wings while Greer is in Los Angeles this evening for Sparks vs. Fever. You can expect some game night coverage on our TikTok and Instagram pages as well as our YouTube channel.

Ball-Knowers that subscribe to the newsletter will have a mini feature on Aziaha James from Tyler on Thursday while I’ll have something special on Upshot ahead of their inaugural games on Friday night.

We’re in the thick of things now, and there’s no slowing down. So consider this your place to get caught up every day without having to get bogged down in the slop of social media. Our little gift to you, the humble women’s hoops fan.

But first, a shout out to Sean Meagher at The Oregonian for the absolute Renaissance painting of a photograph. I’ll touch on it momentarily but man, what a moment for the city of Portland and what an unbelievable way to capture it all in one picture.

Now, onto the newsletter!

Tyler’s thoughts from Dallas on the Dream’s win over the Wings...

Wings head coach Jose Fernandez and forward Awak Kuier’s postgame press conference…

And Nathan Canilao of Bay Area News Group joined us on Luxury Tax this week to talk some Golden State Valkyries, who play tonight against the Chicago Sky…

I love my colleague and fellow Paisan Tyler DeLuca, but I must publicly disagree with him. After rewatching Atlanta vs. Dallas earlier this morning, I’m not actually too worried about Angel Reese and her role on this team. Given the trade that occurred and the injury to Bri Jones, one can be forgiven for thinking that the former Chicago Sky forward would be in-line for major minutes and gaudy statlines.

So far, Reese has the numbers — if she keeps these averages she’s liable to break league rebounding records again — but it can be jarring to see her largely operating around the perimeter instead of inside the paint where she traditionally has. In its totality, it looks like head coach Karl Smesko might be mis-utilizing his star. But possession-to-possession, there’s actually a lot of good that Reese is doing that won’t show up in a stat sheet.

Defensively, she is a force multiplier from a rebounding and versatility standpoint. I thought Reese handled her assignments pretty well and the Dream managed to stifle Dallas’ three-guard lineup. Rhyne Howard, in particular, deserves credit for limiting Paige Bueckers’ and her playmaking ability. But where I found myself surprised was seeing Reese operate in transition and off-ball. I counted at least three possessions over the course of the game where if her teammate had picked their head up in the lane or while driving, Reese would have had at least a few more points.

All that is to say that maybe the expectation that she’d be some kind of number one option on this team was misplaced. The third year forward can be a bucket getter when needed but the strength of this team has run through its guards and will continue to do so as long as Karl Smesko is running things. And perhaps, that’s exactly the proper role for her to really unlock her full potential. Potentially having to settle for being just the most prolific rebounder the league has ever seen when all is said and done? That alone is a good resume header.

In a lot of ways, Portland and the state of Oregon have largely been an epicenter of amazing ‘almost’ moments. There were Damian Lillard’s series-winning buzzer-beaters, in 2014 and 2019. Amazing moments, but not ones that resulted in a championship. Then there was 2021, when Felipe Mora’s game-tying stoppage goal kept the Timbers MLS Cup hopes alive. 30 minutes later, he and a sold out Providence Park watched as New York City FC lifted a trophy.

Don’t even get me started on the amount of times it’s been Oregon’s year in football.

There’s a certain romanticism one can find in these types of extreme emotional swings. The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat and so on and so forth…

But in women’s sports, Portland’s classic sports moments have paid off. Crystal Dunn’s 2022 rocket to send the Thorns to the NWSL Final ended with a championship, their third in nine years. Sabrina Ionescu’s clutch three pointer in the Moda Center with 1:12 to play assured Oregon their first ever NCAA Final Four trip.

If the men’s sports serve as a constant reminder of perilous reality of being a sports fan, Rose City’s women’s sports allow Portlanders permission to dream.

Which is why Sarah Ashlee Barker’s buzzer beating putback is now a foundational piece of the state’s sporting lore. Facing off against a WNBA title favorite in New York, in front of 19,335 fans and with time winding down to nearly zero, Barker got free of Marinne Johannes, corralled Bridget Carleton’s missed shot, collected it and laid it up as she fell to the floor. The audible pop on the Fox 12 Oregon broadcast was magnificent. An expansion franchise that wasn’t supposed to do much of anything this year, beating arguably the top team in the league by adopting a new system and flying to the ball on both ends.

Whatever happens this year and moving forward, Portland fans will always have that. All of the nostalgia of “small market vs. big market”, the swings of rapturous joy and utter despair, culminating in an opportunity to consider the possibilities of what a team — their team — could be. After decades of groundwork, foundational community organizing from Eugene to Corvallis to Portland, from college teams to women’s sports bars to actual grassroots activism, the state finally got their first true pro women’s basketball ‘moment’. A kind where people in the city will brag about being in the arena that night, and those listening will marvel at how cool that must have been.

I said on Twitter last night that maybe the Minnesota Lynx rookie point guard is the superstar that’s been hiding in plain sight. It’s not meant to suggest that Olivia Miles has been overlooked by any means. But I think it is worth noting that her pre-draft analysis was decidedly less of a consensus than some of the other top guards that have entered the WNBA in recent years. Strangely enough, the closest analog I have for Miles is her former Notre Dame teammate Sonia Citron, who gave us no reason to believe she couldn’t succeed at this level. It was just that, for some reason, we had our doubts on a few things.

But what I don’t doubt anymore is whether or not Miles can hold her own at this level. There was a specific moment with a little under two minutes left where you see how she manages to move a defense through moving laterally along the baseline and tricking defenders with her eyes. It’s that little minutiae that you can’t teach that make some players just inherently better at this than others. In short, Miles is a hooper. She understands the game on a molecular level and, even if there are shortcomings that have to be developed in the WNBA, she has clearly passed the eye test to me, at least.

Does that mean I’m ready to crown her Rookie of the Year? No. We’re still just two games into the year, after all. That said, she is now becoming the must-see player of the bunch. As much as we doubted the Lynx coming into this year, they look pretty darn good and holding serve with Phoenix, albeit with no faces, indicates that even a Napheesa Collier-less Minnesota team is still as dangerous as they’ve ever been.

Seattle Storm vs. Toronto Tempo: 7:00 PM ET

A lot of eyes will be on Indiana vs. L.A. as well as Chicago vs. Golden State but I’m personally really curious about how this matchup shakes out. Toronto was the expansion team we thought was built to succeed early and yet, they struggled out of the gate against Washington. It’s a nice contrast of a youth movement vs. experienced vets. Who wins out when live reps are still a differentiating factor?

The Complete Portland Fire Experience On Display in Expansion Season Opener by Sean Highkin, Rose Garden Report

Why WNBA Teams Are Using Hardship Contracts Despite Expanded Rosters by Colin Salao, Front Office Sports

Chicago Sky coach Tyler Marsh carries lessons of adversity into Year 2 by Sean Hurd, Andscape

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