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Fans Fantasize About Sabrina Ionescu Leaving Liberty Amid WNBA Expansion News

WNBA fans are wondering whether Sabrina Ionescu might be incentivized to leave the New York Liberty for a new team.

Grant Young

Aug 28, 2024; Los Angeles, California, USA; New York Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu (20) gestures against the LA Sparks in the first half at Crypto.com Arena. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
Aug 28, 2024; Los Angeles, California, USA; New York Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu (20) gestures against the LA Sparks in the first half at Crypto.com Arena. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

On Wednesday, the WNBA announced that Portland, Oregon, would be receiving the league's 15th franchise.

While there have been rumors and speculation that Portland would be the WNBA's next expansion city (after the San Francisco Bay Area and Toronto received their expansion franchises over the past year), this announcement makes it official. The currently unnamed Portland franchise will begin playing games in 2026, as will Toronto's team.

One of the best aspects of these expansion announcements is that local fanbases get to wonder what their future rosters will look like. This can lead to a lot of fantasizing about star players either returning to their home state or playing for the same region as where their alma mater is located.

And for this future Portland team's case, it means the latter.

New York Liberty star guard Sabrina Ionescu was the No. 1 overall pick of the 2020 WNBA Draft after spending four seasons at the University of Oregon. In the wake of this expansion announcement, The Oregonian's Ryan Clarke noted that Ionescu is slated to become a free agent in the same year Portland begins playing games.

Clarke also reposted an October 2023 article from The Oregonian where Ionescu discusses what it would be like to potentially play in Portland as a professional.

“It wouldn’t be an away game for me,” Ionescu said. “I think it’d be a home game. To be able to play two games here in front of my home crowd, being able to do that would be a full-circle moment for me as well since I never really got a final goodbye in 2020 from Oregon. The four years I had here was cut short, so being able to come back would be something I can’t even think about. It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m really hoping it will.”

Nike employee Alex Tam added in to Clark's initial sentiment, saying on X, "Sabrina becomes a FA in summer of 2026.

Portland’s WNBA team begins play in 2026.

Couldn’t think of a better player to build a franchise here around 👀".

Tam noted in a subsequent post that Ionescu reposted the WNBA's Portland announcement on her Instagram story on Wednesday.

The person writing this (who is a Bay Area native) strongly believes it's worth noting that Ionescu also grew up in the Bay Area, and therefore would also (hopefully) love to play on the Golden State Valkyries. But personal bias aside, it would be cool to see Ionescu becoming the face of Portland's franchise come 2026.

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Grant Young

GRANT YOUNG

Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.

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