Sky vs. Fire: Kamilla Cardoso Goes for 22 and 14 as Chicago Spoils Portland's WNBA Return 98-83

Carla Leite's layup dropped 1:02 into the game, and Moda Center reacted like somebody had just announced free coffee for life. It was the first basket for the Fire, the WNBA was back in Portland for the first time in 24 years, and 19,335 people had clearly been saving their voices since the flip phone era.

Then Kamilla Cardoso went to work. She had 22 points and 14 rebounds, Skylar Diggins added 21 and 11, and the Chicago Sky took a 98-83 win on Saturday night from a game that was tied with 8:39 to play. Great party, Portland. The visitors just ate all the food on the way out.

Portland Refused to Follow the Script

The Fire hung around early and trailed just 19-18 after one. The second quarter is where the experience gap arrived with paperwork. Chicago scored 31 in the period, used a late 8-0 burst to turn 41-32 into 49-32, and went to the locker room ahead 50-37. That is usually when an expansion team starts drafting its moral-victory talking points.

Portland went the other way. Coach Alex Sarama's group came out pressing and trapping, ripped off a 12-2 run to start the half, and got two Bridget Carleton 3s at the end of it to make the score 52-49 about two minutes in. Chicago stretched the margin back to 68-58, because talent is annoying like that, and the Fire answered with nine straight to finish the third down only 68-67.

Carleton then delivered the moment the building had waited on all night, a 3 that tied it at 70 with 8:39 to go. For a little while, an expansion team with no business being this comfortable looked completely comfortable.

Cardoso Turned the Glass Into a Private Club

Cardoso played 25 minutes. That's it. In that time she pulled down eight offensive rebounds, a career high according to the Sky, while the entire Portland roster combined for three. She shot 8 of 15, hit 6 of 8 at the line, and her 14 total boards landed one shy of her career best. When one player beats a whole team on the offensive glass by five, adjustments start to feel like a strongly worded email.

Diggins was the conductor. She went 8 of 12 from the field and 2 of 3 from deep, handed out seven assists and blocked two shots. The Sky's recap says she is the first guard ever with a line of 21 points, 11 rebounds, seven assists and two blocks, a combination only seven players in league history have produced. Guards are not supposed to wander into that neighborhood.

Rickea Jackson scored 19 with career highs in free throws made (eight) and attempted (10). Two newcomers made instant cases, too. Jacy Sheldon had 13 points, four assists, three blocks and a game-best plus-17 in her Sky debut, and fellow debutant Gabriela Jaquez had 10 points, seven rebounds and, per the team, seven deflections, which is the stat that makes opposing point guards need a nap.

For Portland, Leite finished with 18 and earned nearly all of it at the stripe: 11 of 12 on free throws, 3 of 11 from the field. Carleton, the Fire's first pick in the expansion draft, had 13, Sarah Ashlee Barker matched her off the bench, and Megan DiLeo chipped in 10.

Four Minutes That Ended the Party

Everything flipped between that Carleton tie and the 4:47 mark. In that window Chicago went from 70-70 to 85-72, a 15-2 stretch that turned a coin flip into a long night for the home crowd. The dagger was a 24-foot Diggins 3 off a feed from Elizabeth Williams, and Williams was the sneaky engine of the whole thing, with eight of her 10 coming in the fourth despite just 15 minutes of total floor time.

Pressing for 30 minutes is expensive, and the bill came due. Portland won the third quarter by 12 and lost the fourth by 14, and the Sky never let it get closer than double digits again.

The Receipts

• 46-24: Chicago's rebounding margin, including that absurd 14-3 edge on the offensive end.
• 30-16: The fourth quarter, right after Portland had taken the third 30-18.
• 9 of 29: Portland from 3-point range, with Luisa Geiselsoder (1 of 6) and Leite (1 of 5) combining for two makes on 11 tries.
• 26 of 34: Chicago at the free-throw line. Portland shot a better percentage at 16 of 20, just nowhere near as often.
• 16: Points Chicago scored off only eight Portland turnovers, so even tidy ball security came with a tax.

Two Very Different First Chapters

The Sky are 1-0, 1-0 on the road, and nowhere near whole. They did this with what the team calls a starting lineup's worth of talent unavailable: Natasha Cloud, Courtney Vandersloot, Maddy Westbeld, Azurá Stevens and DiJonai Carrington. After a 10-24 season, an offseason overhaul left just four players from last year's group, and Angel Reese went to Atlanta for first-round picks in 2027 and 2028. The team also counts this as Chicago's first opening win in three years. It was stop one of a four-game trip, and Golden State is next on Wednesday.

The Fire are 0-1, 0-1 at home, with New York coming to town Tuesday as their four-game homestand rolls on. They are the second-youngest team in the league, and nobody in that building seemed to mind the growing pains. Portland had a WNBA team by this same name for three seasons from 2000 to 2002, so this city already knows what it feels like when one goes away. One loss was never going to scare it off.

Pilot Episodes Are Supposed to Be Messy

Every expansion team's first game is a pilot. The cast is still learning each other's names, the plot wanders, and somebody more experienced walks off with the best scene. But pilots don't get judged on whether the hero wins. They get judged on whether people come back next week, and 19,335 screaming people suggest Portland has already been renewed. Chicago gets the win and Cardoso gets a stat line for the fridge. Moda Center got something 24 years in the making, and it sounded like it.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Game details as reported by the Associated Press. Additional notes from the Chicago Sky.