Vanja Černivec: The Builder

The Hire

Portland named Vanja Černivec the inaugural General Manager of the Fire in August 2025. She was 43 years old. Slovenian. And she had just helped build a WNBA expansion team that won more games than any expansion team in league history. When you're starting a franchise from zero, you hire someone who's done it before. Portland found the one person on the planet who literally just finished doing it.

Černivec oversees everything: the head coach search (she hired Alex Sarama), roster construction, player development, the expansion draft, free agency, the college draft. Every basketball decision runs through her. She's building the entire operation.

The Valkyries Blueprint

Before Portland, Černivec was VP of Basketball Operations for the Golden State Valkyries. That's the Bay Area's WNBA expansion team, and she was there from the beginning. She guided the Valkyries through the 2024 Expansion Draft and the 2025 WNBA Draft. She helped build the coaching staff and support structure. She oversaw the day-to-day basketball operations. The result: the Valkyries became the winningest expansion team in WNBA history.

That experience is the reason Portland hired her. Building an expansion roster isn't just about picking the best available players. It's about understanding cap mechanics, reading the protection lists other teams submit, identifying which players will actually sign rather than test free agency, and constructing a roster that makes sense together rather than just collecting talent. Černivec did all of that in Golden State. Now she's doing it again in Portland, except this time she's the one in charge.

London and Beyond

Before the Valkyries, Černivec was General Manager of the London Lions women's team. Under her leadership, the Lions won the first FIBA EuroCup Women's title in British basketball history. Not a domestic league title (though they won back-to-back British league championships too). A European title. She took a London basketball team and made them continental champions. That's an absurd accomplishment for a program that didn't have the infrastructure or tradition of the Spanish, French, or Turkish powerhouses.

She also worked with the NBA's Basketball Without Borders program, which develops basketball talent across the globe. And from 2020 to 2022, she scouted for the Chicago Bulls. That's the NBA. She's worked at every level of the basketball ecosystem: youth development, European club basketball, NBA scouting, WNBA expansion operations. There is no version of a basketball front office challenge she hasn't seen.

Building Portland

The expansion draft happened April 3, 2026. Portland picked first overall (settled by a coin toss on March 27) and Černivec went to work. Eleven players across two rounds. Bridget Carleton went first, a veteran wing and unrestricted free agent Portland couldn't risk losing to Toronto. Then Emily Engstler, Haley Jones, Sug Sutton, Nika Mühl. Every pick had a logic: versatility, defense, shooting, experience.

Check the expansion draft tracker for the full breakdown of every pick and why it mattered. Černivec built a roster that can switch defensively, space the floor, and compete from day one. Not a rebuild roster. A foundation roster.

How It Played Out

The expansion draft was step one. April 11 opened free agency, where Černivec used her $7M cap to land Carleton, Samuelson, and Gustafson in the first 48 hours. April 15-16 added training-camp deals for Oblak, Smalls, P. Williams, and Jordan Harrison. April 13 in New York, Portland used pick #7 on Iyana Martín (overseas until 2027), pick #17 on Frieda Bühner (development pool), and a draft-night trade with Connecticut for Serah Williams at #33. May 8 brought the cuts: Caldwell traded to Minnesota, Bibby traded to Phoenix, Peyton Williams waived. The 12-player active roster took the floor in the May 9 home opener (98-83 loss to Chicago in front of 19,335).

Free agency was where the Valkyries experience paid off the most. Černivec knew which players were genuinely available, which ones were using expansion interest as leverage with their current teams, and which ones would actually come to a new franchise. She knew the cap math. She'd done this exact negotiation cycle before, just last year, with Golden State's money. The Galatasaray pipeline (Oblak and Smalls were teammates there in 2025-26) is the kind of edge most WNBA front offices do not have.

The 44-game schedule opened May 9 with a 98-83 home loss to Chicago in front of 19,335. Three nights later, the first win in modern franchise history: 98-96 over the New York Liberty. Carleton 26 (5 threes), Leite 21-and-6, Smalls 13 in her Fire debut, Barker putback at the buzzer. On May 11 Černivec made her first in-season roster move — waiving rookie Jordan Harrison to activate Kamiah Smalls off the suspended list (knee). The Fire are 1-1, the original Fire lasted three seasons, and this version is being built to last.