Teja Oblak: The Import Nobody Was Calling

Who Signs a EuroLeague Champion in April?

A team run by a GM who knows European basketball. That is the short version. Vanja Černivec did not get this job because she read the internet. She came up through European women's basketball and she knows where the useful players are. Teja Oblak is one of them. She has been for years. Nobody in the WNBA was listing her. They were watching college draft prospects and letting a 2025 EuroLeague champion run the point for Galatasaray without a phone call.

On April 15, 2026, Portland picked up the phone. Training camp contract. Not a guaranteed roster spot. She came in, competed through camp and the two preseason games, and on May 8 her contract was placed on temporary suspended status when Portland set the 12-player opening-night active roster. Still under Fire control, could be reactivated during the season. But she is in Portland, and the door isn't closed.

What She Has Done

Let's anchor to verifiable results, because that's what matters. In the 2025-26 EuroLeague Women season with Galatasaray she averaged 10.2 points, 4.4 assists, and 2.5 rebounds per game. EuroLeague Women is the top club competition on the continent. 4.4 assists a game in that league is not a compiler number. It is a player who runs the team. Her shooting and distribution numbers are the numbers of a pro who is still in her prime.

Before Galatasaray she won the 2025 EuroLeague Women Championship with ZVVZ USK Praha, the Czech club that has been one of the dominant teams in Europe. She was also a teammate of Kamiah Smalls at Galatasaray in 2025-26, which is not a small detail. Both players signed in Portland within 24 hours of each other. That is not an accident. That is scouting.

Internationally, Oblak has been a pillar of Slovenia's senior national team. She has played at multiple EuroBaskets. She has been the player her coaches trust to take the ball up the floor when the game is close. That kind of reliability does not show up in a box score. It shows up in how she runs a possession.

Why the WNBA Is Late to This

Point guard is the position where American-born and American-coached players have dominated WNBA rosters for 20 years. The league's scouting infrastructure is still oriented around NCAA production first, European production second. If you are a European guard, you either go to a U.S. college or you get overlooked. Oblak did not go to a U.S. college. She built her career in Europe. That is why a 2025 EuroLeague champion is signing a training camp contract in 2026 instead of getting an established WNBA home in 2021.

Portland's roster construction is betting that infrastructure is wrong. Carla Leite, Luisa Geiselsöder, Iyana Martín Carrión, Frieda Bühner, Chloe Bibby, Nyadiew Puoch, Nika Mühl, and now Oblak. Portland has eight players on the camp roster with international pipelines. The league's best-kept secret is that Europe has been producing high-level guards and forwards for years and nobody in the WNBA was paying close enough attention.

The Fit

Portland needs point guard help. That is not a hot take, it is arithmetic. Sug Sutton is on a qualifying offer. Martín Carrión is not coming until 2027. Mühl is out with an ACL. Without the April 15-16 signings, Portland had one healthy point guard under contract. Oblak gives Coach Sarama a veteran who has run an offense at the EuroLeague level. Harrison gives him a rookie-level ball pressure defender. That is a credible two-person depth chart behind Sutton, and it was built in 48 hours.

Oblak did not make the final 12 on May 8. Sug Sutton kept the veteran point-guard role, Jordan Harrison won the rookie backup spot, and Maya Caldwell was traded to Minnesota. Oblak's contract was placed on temporary suspended status, which means she remains under Portland control. If a guard goes down with an injury, or if the front office decides Sutton's qualifying-offer situation needs depth, Oblak is the first option. The reliability she brings (a EuroLeague-champion floor general who does not turn the ball over) is exactly what an expansion team holds for the long season ahead.

What to Watch

Training camp opened April 19. The preseason opener was April 29 at Seattle, an 81-91 loss in which Oblak was a DND (did not dress). That makes the May 3 home preseason vs the LA Sparks her real audition: does she handle WNBA speed, does she turn it over, does she find shooters. If the answer is yes, she is going to be on the opening-night roster for the May 9 home opener. If the answer is no, she is back in Europe for another year, and Portland's other camp invites play their way in.

Next preseason game: May 3 vs the LA Sparks at Moda Center, 4 PM PT, on Rose City SportsNet (formerly FOX 12 Plus).