Kamiah Smalls: Team Five

Who Keeps Going

There is a version of Kamiah Smalls's career arc where she quits after year two or three. She was a second-round pick in 2020, the year the WNBA played in a bubble and half the world figured out women's basketball for the first time. She put up numbers at James Madison, where she averaged 19.6 points, 7.5 rebounds, and 3.3 assists a game, finished fourth in program scoring, and got drafted by Indiana. Then the pro game started. Indiana, Connecticut, Minnesota, Atlanta. Four WNBA teams. None of them guaranteed her anything. Between the stops she played in France, then Italy, then Turkey. She has spent the last six years of her life pulling a suitcase off a luggage belt in a new city and figuring out the locker room.

Portland signed her April 15, 2026 to a training camp contract. Team five. She has to fight for a spot again. At this point it would be a surprise if she didn't know how.

The Galatasaray Connection

Here's a detail that gets past most box scores. In 2025-26, Smalls played for Galatasaray in Turkey. Her teammate at Galatasaray was Teja Oblak. Both players signed with the Portland Fire within 24 hours of each other on April 15, 2026. Same club one season, same training camp the next. GM Černivec is either watching Galatasaray games closely or Portland has a scout embedded in Istanbul. Either way, it is a reminder that roster construction under the new CBA is not happening on ESPN. It is happening on club team film rooms in Europe, and Portland is paying attention in a way most other WNBA teams are not.

What She Brings

Veteran guard with four WNBA seasons of data already on tape. She has played in multiple systems and multiple roles across Indiana, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Atlanta. That kind of adaptability matters on an expansion team where everybody is new to each other. She knows what a WNBA training camp feels like. She knows what it is to arrive at camp on a non-guaranteed contract and play your way into minutes. That experience is worth something to a coaching staff trying to evaluate a lot of bodies in a short window.

The 2020 draft class is now six years old. A lot of those players are gone. The ones still in the league are the ones who figured out how to make themselves useful in specific situations. Smalls has done that through four different organizations. Whatever her role is in Portland, she is going to arrive prepared.

The Fit and the Odds

Portland's backcourt rotation is crowded. Bridget Carleton, Karlie Samuelson, Maya Caldwell, Haley Jones, Sarah Ashlee Barker, Sug Sutton, and now Oblak, Smalls, and Harrison. That is a lot of guards competing for maybe six roster spots. Smalls has an uphill fight.

But here's the thing. Camp contracts are not a final judgment. They are an audition. If Smalls outplays another guard in preseason, she makes the roster. If she doesn't, she's shown her work to a coaching staff that now knows what she can do. Either way she is closer to the next WNBA opportunity than she was the day before she flew to Portland.

What to Watch

Two preseason games: April 29 at Seattle (81-91 loss, Smalls was a DND) and May 3 at home vs the LA Sparks. The May 3 game on Rose City SportsNet (formerly FOX 12 Plus) is her real audition. Watch for Smalls in the second and third quarter rotations if she dresses. Watch how she plays against veterans she might have played with or against in the past. Watch her free-throw shooting, her defensive positioning, her decision-making with the second unit. These are the minutes where camp contracts make or break themselves.

If she makes the roster, the May 9 home opener at Moda Center is her fifth WNBA jersey. If she doesn't, she's 27 or 28 and she's going back to Europe, where she is already a respected professional. Either outcome, her career continues. Portland just gave her the chance to add a chapter.