Portland Hearth’s new brand and the return of its unique crew identify.
Courtesy: Portland Hearth | WNBA
Portland’s WNBA enlargement crew on Tuesday unveiled its new branding and identify — the Portland Hearth — a rekindling of town’s earlier WNBA crew that performed from 2000 to 2002.
The brand new brand incorporates a rose on fireplace, a reference to Portland’s nickname because the “Rose Metropolis,” merged with the “unrelenting depth of flame,” in response to a launch by the WNBA. The crew colours are purple, brown, blue and pink.
“As a metropolis that has lengthy championed girls’s sports activities, Portland is able to reclaim its place within the WNBA and reignite its connection to the sport on the world stage,” mentioned Clare Hamill, Portland Hearth interim president, in a press release.
“We’re thrilled to finish the journey of bringing skilled girls’s basketball again to the Rose Metropolis, whereas honoring the legacy of the unique franchise to blaze a brand new, daring path ahead,” Hamill mentioned.
The brand new branding consists of a number of nods to town and area, in response to the WNBA, together with the 12 bridges that join town from east to west, the curved roofline of the crew’s residence enviornment, the Moda Middle, and the silhouette of Mount Hood, the very best level in Oregon.
The relaunch comes because the crew surpassed a milestone of 10,000 season ticket deposits, placing the Hearth on tempo to exceed earlier WNBA season ticket deposit information, the league mentioned.
The Portland crew grew to become the WNBA’s fifteenth franchise when it was introduced in September. It’s a part of an enlargement push for the WNBA and increase in girls’s sports activities total in recent times. In June, the WNBA introduced the addition of three new teams in Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia, bringing the full variety of groups to 18 by 2030.
Sylvia Crawley #00 of the Portland Hearth drives the ball round Lisa Leslie #9 of the Los Angeles Sparks within the sport on June 3, 2002 at Staples Middle in Los Angeles, California.
Andrew D. Bernstein | Nationwide Basketball Affiliation | Getty Photographs
The crew is owned by RAJ Sports activities, an funding agency targeted on sports activities, led by Alex Bhathal and Lisa Bhathal Merage.
The Portland Hearth will tip off in 2026 on the Moda Middle in downtown Portland, the WNBA mentioned. That enviornment can also be residence to the NBA’s Portland Trailblazers.
The crew will prepare with the Portland Thorns FC crew, additionally owned by RAJ Sports activities, at a forthcoming dual-sport girls’s efficiency heart.