A Conversation with WNBA Expansion Team Portland Fire's GM Vanja Černivec

Vanja Černivec joins Dan Roberts of Front Office Sports to discuss: • Building the Fire roster under extreme CBA timeline pressure • Why she doesn’t believe in copying and pasting from the Valkyries model • Portland as an emerging epicenter of women's sports • The international player pipeline and new CBA changes • Coaching through constraints and the playoff push in Year 1 CHAPTERS 0:00 Ten Months as GM of the Portland Fire: How Has It Gone 0:53 Building a Roster Under CBA Timeline Pressure 1:53 Can You Copy the Valkyries Model or Is Portland Different 3:08 How Much of the Valkyries Success Was Warriors vs Its Own Phenomenon 4:39 Portland as an Epicenter of Women's Sports Under Raj Sports Ownership 5:58 Has the WNBA Fueled Investment in All Women's Sports 6:41 International Players in the WNBA and the New CBA Impact 8:07 Project B, Unrivaled, and the Rise of Women's Basketball Globally 9:16 The Constraints-Led Coaching Approach Getting Buzz Around the League 10:53 Can the Portland Fire Make the Playoffs in Year One Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices