Fire vs. Liberty: Expansion Portland Gets First Win of the Season on Sarah Ashlee Barker's Buzzer-Beater

The shot that won this game was not actually the shot anybody drew up. With the score tied at 96 and the clock bleeding out on Tuesday night, Bridget Carleton launched a 3-pointer that slammed off the backboard without so much as grazing the rim. Then Sarah Ashlee Barker, who had three points to her name at that moment, won a scrum for the carom, put it back as the buzzer went, and vanished beneath a pile of teammates.

The expansion Portland Fire beat the New York Liberty 98-96 at Moda Center for their first win, three days after a 98-83 loss to Chicago in their WNBA opener. Carleton finished with a career-high 26 points and five 3s, Carla Leite had 21 points and six assists, and a Liberty team that had just hung 106 on Connecticut and survived overtime in Washington took its first loss of the season.

Portland Spent the Whole Night Chasing

New York led for 77% of this game, and for long stretches, the Liberty looked like they were playing a different sport. They went up 27-21 after one, helped by an 8-0 run. Portland answered with 12 straight to go ahead 33-29 in the second quarter, then watched New York rip off 9-0 and 8-0 bursts for a 51-38 lead, the biggest of the night for either side. It was 54-47 at the half.

The Fire just kept coming back. A 10-0 run early in the third turned 56-47 into a 57-56 Portland lead. New York steadied and took a 77-70 edge into the fourth, and then the final period turned into a game of chicken with 3-point range. Portland won the quarter 28-19, tying it at 89 on an 8-footer off a Barker pass with 4:47 left.

From there, nobody in the building got to exhale. Breanna Stewart's pull-up put New York back on top, and Leite answered with two free throws. Carleton's running 25-footer gave the Fire a 94-91 lead with 2:52 to go, and Marine Johannes tied it at 1:54 with a 25-foot off-balance prayer as the shot clock died. Jonquel Jones made two free throws with 42.9 seconds left for a 96-94 lead. Leite tied it again on a 2-footer at 27.1.

The Whistle That Changed the Ending

New York had the ball, a tie game and a chance to take the last shot. Instead, the possession ended in a three-second violation with 13.8 seconds left, and Portland got the final say. It was a tiny, avoidable whistle in a game with 28 made 3-pointers and 14 lead changes, and it is the only reason anyone is talking about Barker's putback at all.

The rest was pure chaos. Carleton's miss was ugly enough to be disqualifying, but WNBA.com's account says New York failed to box out, and Barker was the one who cared the most about what happened next. The Fire grabbed eight offensive rebounds all night. Exactly one of them is going in the scrapbook.

The Stars Who Got Them There

Carleton, the Fire's first pick in the expansion draft, was the best player on the floor for most of the evening: 26 points on 9-of-16 shooting, 5 of 11 from deep, four steals and zero turnovers. Leite attacked all game, going 8 of 14 from the field and 5 of 5 at the line, and finished plus-14. Kamiah Smalls scored 13 in just 14 minutes by hitting 4 of 5 from 3, and Luisa Geiselsoder added 13 of her own. Barker, for the record, wound up with five points in 22 minutes off the bench. Two of them will be replayed for a while.

For New York, rookie Pauline Astier was the headline in a losing effort. She poured in a career-high 24 on 10-of-14 shooting, which the Liberty say is the biggest scoring night yet from any 2026 rookie. All five New York starters reached double figures, with Johannes at 18, Jones at 17, Stewart at 16 with 10 rebounds and Betnijah Laney-Hamilton at 10.

Stewart also collected her 2,500th career rebound, and the team notes that no player in WNBA history had ever gotten to 6,000 points and 2,500 rebounds in under 300 games. She did it in her 295th. It is a heck of a consolation prize, though not one she will frame tonight. New York was short-handed again, too. Sabrina Ionescu sat out with a left foot injury and spent part of her pregame in an Oregon sweatshirt, hugging her former Ducks coach, Kelly Graves.

Stats That Matter

• 28: Made 3s between the two teams, with Portland going 15 of 33 and New York 13 of 28.
• 15 of 15: Portland at the free-throw line. In a two-point game, that counts as a plot point.
• 25-19: Portland's edge in points off turnovers, with New York giving it away 18 times.
• 13 and 4: The largest leads for New York and Portland, respectively. The bigger number lost.
• 77%: The share of the game New York spent in front, which turns out to be not quite enough.

What It Means for a Team That Just Got Here

Portland is 1-1, and both games have come at home, where a four-game homestand to open the season rolls on. The Fire drew 12,386 on Tuesday after packing in 19,335 on Saturday, the second-largest crowd for a home opener in WNBA history. This is the league's first go-round in the city in 24 years, since an earlier team also called the Fire played from 2000 through 2002, so the fans have some catching up to do. They got a wild installment.

New York slides to 2-1, and 1-1 on the road, after scoring 96 points and still finding a way to lose. The Liberty do not have to go far to get even. They stay in Portland and face the Fire again on Thursday, which gives Astier, Stewart and the rest of the group about 48 hours to think about box-out fundamentals.

Class Is in Session

Portlandia taught us the local solution to everything is to put a bird on it. Barker's solution was simpler: put it back. Head coach Alex Sarama summed up the whole wild finish in three words, according to WNBA.com: "Portland Fire 101." If that is the intro course, the rest of the syllabus is going to be exhausting, and nobody in Moda Center is asking to drop the class.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Game details as reported by the Associated Press, the New York Liberty and WNBA.com.