Fire Defeat the Storm 77-72 Part 2

Additional thoughts, discussion, and interviews from Seattle's loss to Portland.

The Seattle Storm (5-17) lost to the Portland Fire (9-12) for the second time this season. Once again, the outcome was decided by five points. While it felt like the Storm let one slip away down in Portland back on June 17th, this time the Fire entered the 4th quarter with a 7-point lead and never relinquished it. If you missed it, you can read my full game recap at this link below.

For Part 2, there were a lot of things to discuss, including Portland’s point guard Carla Leite, Dominique Malonga’s opportunities to learn, the problems figuring out new rotations, and how losing to Portland isn’t all bad.

Carla Leite

It’s honestly pretty surprising that Carla Leite has been left unprotected in the past two WNBA Expansion Drafts. She was drafted 9th overall by the Dallas Wings in the 2024 draft, but did not play for the team. She was a draft and stash player, not unlike what the Storm did with both Ezi Magbegor and Jade Melbourne during their draft seasons. However, during the Valkyries’ expansion draft, the Wings left Leite unprotected, and she was selected by Golden State.

Leite had a solid rookie season in 2025 as a backup point guard to Veronica Burton. Burton, ironically also drafted by the Dallas Wings, went on to win the Most Improved Player of the Year award last season, while setting career-highs in points (11.9 PPG), assists (6.0 APG), and rebounds (4.4 RPG). Leite was also solid as a backup, where she averaged 7.2 PPG and 2.0 APG as a reserve off the bench.

However, after showing some real positive signs during her rookie year, the Golden State Valkyries also left her unprotected during the Portland Fire/Toronto Tempo Expansion Drafts the very next year. The Valkyries’ front office has taken heat for the Flau’jae Johnson trade during the 2026 draft night, but leaving Leite unprotected might be just as bad. At least in the Flau’jae trade, Golden State did acquire two second-round draft picks. They let Leite get drafted away for nothing in return.

Ultimately, I’m sure their staff isn’t too concerned, considering the Valkyries have won 8 out of their last 10 games, and currently hold the third-best record in the WNBA at 14-7. But that doesn’t mean the process can’t be questioned.

The Valkyries’ loss is Portland’s gain. Leite has been the expansion franchise’s best player through their first 19 games. She is averaging 15.4 PPG and 5.6 APG during her sophomore season in the WNBA. Honestly, I would have to believe that she is a serious candidate to potentially win the Most Improved Player of the Year award this season after Burton won it last year.

When looking at the Storm’s roster, the young core of Dominique Malonga, Awa Fam, and Flau’jae Johnson is likely the players the team will build around for the foreseeable future. For Portland, I think they have to build around Carla Leite. She is just 22 years old, has improved significantly this season, and plays one of the most important positions in basketball (the point guard).

It also makes me wonder what they’ll do with their first-round draft pick (7th overall), Iyana Martín. She is a point guard out of Spain who was also a draft and stash player from overseas. Did Portland not expect Carla Leite to be as good as she was, and so they drafted another point guard? Did they believe Martín had a higher ceiling than Leite? If they had known Leite was going to play like this, would they have selected another player? Some of the noteworthy players who were selected after Martín would be Flau’jae Johnson (8th overall), Cotie McMahon (11th overall), and Madina Okot (13th overall). From a roster-building standpoint, it seems like they may have been better off drafting Okot since they lack size. In future seasons, we’ll see if selecting Martín when they already had Leite was the correct decision. For now, they can be reassured that they have a very good player in Carla. And I don’t expect Portland to leave her exposed in the 2028 Expansion Draft for the new Cleveland team.

Opportunities to Learn

One thing that really stood out in this game was how important Dominique Malonga is and why she must avoid getting into early foul trouble. Fortunately, the Storm drafted Awa Fam 3rd overall and signed Ezi Magbegor to a 3-year contract extension. Of all the teams in the WNBA, few have the depth and athleticism that Seattle possesses in the front court. But Malonga’s size and length naturally create so many mismatches that the Storm need her on the floor.

She scored a game-high 22 points and didn’t even play half of the game. Malonga played just five minutes in the first half because she picked up three fouls in five minutes of action. Sadly, I thought her 2nd and 3rd fouls were just careless fouls where she reached. One where she tried to stop Carla Leite from driving up near the three-point line in transition, and another where Leite beat her opponent off the dribble, and Malonga reached in the last-second. Both of them were easy foul calls for the ref to make.

Her first foul was three minutes into the game. The second foul came exactly one minute later and sent the second-year center to the bench with six minutes remaining in the first period. She then returned to start the 2nd quarter and immediately committed another foul 42 seconds into that period. As I mentioned in the last paragraph, the second and third fouls were 100% unnecessary. Dom has to learn that she is far too important to make those mistakes. And that it’s OK to give up a single layup to Leite if that is the difference between playing just five minutes in the first half or being able to play 12-15 minutes over the game’s first 20 minutes. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Storm only scored 10 points in the second quarter and Malonga had to sit all but 42 seconds of the period.

Mazvita asked Coach Raman in the post-game if this is an area where Malonga has the opportunity to grow (learning to avoid foul trouble).

“Yeah, I mean, that’s just part of it, right? Like, you see that foul trouble with young bigs, like, that’s always a thing that I think young players have to get used to. She’s, what, like a sophomore, junior in college age, right? And you see, you watch games, and you see that that’s a thing. And Dom is just so far along that we might forget that she’s 20 years old, but what she’s able to do out there is really phenomenal. And so we keep encouraging her and keep working with her on just being able to defend without fouling and to be able to keep her on the floor a little bit longer.” Raman stated.

“But, yeah, I think this just kind of takes time to get used to that with the big minutes that she’s playing now, guarding the other teams’ tough starting center, starting power forwards. It’s a little bit different than what she was doing in the previous year.” She added.

New Rotations, New Problems

It’s been a disappointing two-game stretch with losses to Phoenix and Portland after Seattle’s best two games of the season with their impressive home wins against the New York Liberty and the Atlanta Dream. The Storm were finally fully healthy with the return of Ezi Magbegor and Jordan Horston. With the season nearing the midway point, they finally have their full complement of players.

With how impressive Dom and Awa had been lately, it was very exciting to see what adding Ezi Magbegor could do for the team. Plus, getting Jordan Horston back was very important, as Seattle clearly missed her defense and energy in some of their losses before their wins against the Liberty and Dream. So with that in mind, why has the team looked really bad since they were added to the lineup?

Seattle kept its same starting lineup of PG: Jade Melbourne, SG: Natisha Hiedeman, SF: Flau’jae Johnson, PF: Awa Fam, and C: Dominique Malonga, which they had during their recent wins. I thought that was probably the correct decision. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. And the team looked great before these most recent two games. Adding Ezi and Jordan should only make the team that much better, but it hasn’t. At least not yet.

I think there is a legitimate challenge to finding the right rotations, the right players to play together, and which players have the best chemistry together. It’s also difficult because Awa and Dom are two critical pieces that will be playing a lot of minutes. But they also signed Ezi Magbegor to the richest contract in Seattle Storm history. The team has also missed Magbegor’s rim protection through the first 20 games of the season when they had to play without her. They need her. But they also need her to get back into playing shape and get her rhythm back. Ezi missed a few shots she should have easily made (although so did Dom and Awa).

Where does Jordan fit in? She played the fewest amount of minutes of any player who saw the court on Saturday night. Zia Cooke played 16 minutes, including nine in the 4th quarter, because Flau’jae Johnson wasn’t scoring. Johnson went 0-5 FG from the floor. But then Zia went 0-4 FG on her shots. A big reason the Storm lost was that Flau’jae, Jade, Jordan, and Zia combined to score just 12 points total on 3-14 FG shooting. They needed more from their guard and wing players.

During the post-game press conference, Bella did a good job of asking both the players and Coach Raman whether adding the two players back into the rotation was causing issues with team chemistry, causing stagnation with the offense, and if there were growing pains with that.

Hiedeman responded, “I wouldn’t say growing pains because, you know, we've just been waiting for them to get back. We’ve been super excited. We’ve been seeing Ezi work hard every day, day in and day out, and then obviously we had Jordy back, and then lost her for a couple of games, but just their energy and their effort on the court, especially defensively, like two amazing defensive stoppers. I wouldn’t say there’s anything about working them in. I feel like it’s just, we have so many great players on this team, so it’s just getting everybody the time that they need and getting the flow back.”

Coach Raman spoke on the issue as well. She said, “Yeah, I think that there’s always an adjustment period, and whether that leads to what happens in those particular possessions. I don’t think that it’s necessarily that causal because we’ve had possessions like that this season without them on the floor. So I think they’re two separate things, but it does take time to kind of just get comfortable, get the chemistry, build being on a string together, the connection that they have on the court. That just takes time to develop, and I think that we’re starting to see what that might look like and some of the glimpses of it with Ezi, obviously with Jordan, she’s already been playing, so it’s a little bit smoother to be able to do that. But I think we’re seeing it.”

Raman continued, “And I’m really pleased with how far along Ezi is after all of that time off. And I think we just all have to remember that these things are a process, and you can’t skip steps. You just kind of have to let this group, right? That roster with Ezi on the floor, just continue to play together and continue to gel.”

Is it a Good Thing that Portland Won?

When it comes to draft position and potential lottery picks, the Portland Fire picking up wins against the Seattle Storm is actually a good thing for Seattle. The Storm have played exactly 1/2 of their games this year. Their record is 5-17. I think it’s fair to say that they won’t be a playoff team this year. I’m sure it’s been disappointing for the players, but this is what I realistically expected. This season has always been more about development, improvement, and learning. It’s an opportunity for the players to learn and grow, and for the front office to learn what they have and what they still need.

If we establish that the team is headed to the lottery, then it’s best if they improve their odds at the potential #1 overall pick, and even just a Top 3 selection. With the Storm’s recent two-game win streak over New York and Atlanta, they had actually moved ahead (in the wrong direction) of the Portland Fire. That’s because even though Portland has been the better team this season than Seattle, the Storm won 23 games last year, which is going to hurt them with the lottery odds for 2027. However, it’s still very realistic that Seattle can finish the season with the third-best odds to claim the #1 overall pick.

As I have written before, it’s virtually 100% impossible for Seattle to have better lottery odds than the Connecticut Sun (soon to be the Houston Comets) because the Sun were terrible last year and they’re terrible again this year. The only way Seattle can have better odds than them is if the Sun were to win around 20 more games than the Storm this year. That isn’t going to happen. Unfortunately, for both Seattle and Chicago, it isn’t looking very likely that they can have better odds than Chicago either. The Sky’s combined two-year record is 16-48, and the Storm’s is currently 28-38. The reason it’s unfortunate for Chicago is that even if they end up with the #1 pick, that pick will go to the Washington Mystics, who own the swap rights between the two teams for 2027. The Sky were supposed to be a playoff team after signing multiple veterans in the offseason, but they’ve been anything but.

Seattle’s other major competition for a Top 3 lottery odds is Portland, Washington, Los Angeles, and, to a lesser extent, Toronto. The Mystics will be a fascinating team to watch because they are currently sitting in the 8th and final playoff spot. D.C. also has zero incentive to lose games because it gets to swap picks with Chicago. The Mystics can be a playoff team this year AND land the #1 overall pick. However, Washington will have to fend off multiple suitors for that spot. They are currently ahead of Toronto, Los Angeles, Portland, and Phoenix. I feel all of those teams could still make the playoffs, depending on how the 2nd half of the season goes.

Currently, if the Mystics fall out of the playoffs, they would move back below Seattle. That would give them two opportunities to win the lottery with better odds than the Storm, with either their own pick or Chicago’s.

When the Storm are at their best and beating New York, Atlanta, or their big win against the Mystics earlier this season, it makes me think they are further along in their development than they actually are. But then they drop multiple games against teams I feel they are more talented than. If they are going to lose games this year, they should lose to teams like Portland, Toronto, Dallas, and Washington. Seattle’s five-point loss to the Fire on Saturday night isn’t that bad in the long-term.

Player Interviews

Dominique Malonga and Natisha Hiedeman:

Coach’s Quotes

Coach Ramam post-game:

Notes:
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Photography Credits: Seattle Storm/WNBA Photography
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