Why Portland Fire Coach Alex Sarama Is Going All In On CLA

Aug 11, 2026 02:36 AM - 2 hours ago 1

Ask astir coaches what went correct aft a triumph and you get the accustomed spiel astir effort, gratitude, characteristic and heart. Ask Alex Sarama, the caput coach of inaugural Portland Fire WNBA team, and you get connection for illustration pick-and-pops, twists and re-screens, spacing astir the pick-and-roll. There’s besides precocious praise astir playing dense successful the gaps, building walls connected defense and players making two-on-one reads.

It’s not caller coach-speak. It's the speech he uses that helps explicate the Constraints-Led Approach (CLA), the training accuracy Sarama has built his profession connected and refined since he was a teenager.

“Most analytical models had america for 9 wins for the year,” Sarama said. “I’m really happy pinch really the group's responding to things, the style of play. I really consciousness for illustration we're getting the champion retired of our players and maximizing them.”

How The Portland Fire Players Have Responded To CLA

This twelvemonth Portland are 13-19 and 5th successful the West. They surpassed immoderate pre-season predictions of little than 10 wins for an description team. Further, their apical players are each having profession seasons. Carla Leite, who averaged 7.2 points per crippled successful 2025, is now scoring 15.9 points per game; Bridget Carleton has much than doubled her scoring output of 6.5 points per crippled successful 2025, to 14.3 points this year. Megan DiLeo is averaging 12.9 points and Sug Sutton was shooting profession numbers (11.3 points per game) earlier being traded to Dallas. If the Fire do hap to suffice for playoffs it would replicate what Golden State Valkyries did past play and go the 2nd squad to scope playoffs successful its inaugural season.

But nary of that explains what’s really made their travel nether coach Sarama different from immoderate different WNBA club. When he took the coaching job, portion of the entreaty was building a strategy done CLA from the crushed up.

“You’ve sewage to benignant of beryllium each successful aliases not astatine all. I consciousness for illustration we’re taking it really acold successful position of practices, subordinate development,” he said. “I wanted to return it further. But I don't spot CLA arsenic for illustration a magical bullet.”

CLA draws connected the investigation of athletics scientists Keith Davids and Dr. Rob Gray, who studied centrifugal learning and really athletes really get accomplishment nether pressure. Rather than isolated repetition and moving a move until it looks cleanable pinch nary defender successful the way, CLA asks coaches to build constraints into the drill itself: a three-on-three group pinch nary dribbling, aliases a defense that has to find its reply live, switching aliases hedging connected the alert alternatively of drilling 1 sum successful isolation. (Soccer coaches usage a type of this connected TikTok, shrinking the extremity to unit amended changeable selection.)

Brittni Donaldson spent 8 years successful the NBA pinch stops astatine the Raptors erstwhile they won the title successful 2019, the Pistons and the Hawks. She was hired successful a hybrid front-office-and-coaching domiciled pinch Portland and viewed arsenic a “groundbreaking hire”. The 33-year-old is Sarama's lead adjunct during the play and a adjacent collaborator pinch wide head Vanja Černivec.

Donaldson believes that Portland’s reply arsenic an inaugural squad looking to play pinch separator is to make believe deliberately little tidy and move distant from the aged style of reasoning that cleanable believe makes perfect. Giving much privilege to sessions that nutrient adaptable players pinch game-like chaos complete sessions that look clean.

The model Donaldson uses to explicate the payoff is competence earlier confidence. That is, springiness a subordinate capable opportunities to lick unrecorded problems, and the competence follows – built by adapting alternatively than memorizing a scripted answer. Donaldson says this is not only applied tactically, it’s filtered into everything they do: from managing subordinate health, rotation patterns, really players lukewarm up successful practice, and giving players the greenish ray to lead discussions.

“We’re putting them successful situations wherever we’re not ever giving them the reply up front. So they're having to accommodate and deliberation and collaborate connected the fly. It’s conscionable much typical of what they'll spot successful a game,” she said. “We benignant of talked astir it for illustration an airplane metaphor. We're gonna spell done immoderate turbulence each now and then, but we person to conscionable support the level flying."

Alex Sarama’s Method Took 15 Years To Build

To understand why Sarama thinks this method has much of an separator than opportunity accepted systems you person to spell backmost 15 years to erstwhile he was a 16-year-old. In a schoolhouse gym, he built the Goldhawks hoops club. He recalled location were nary different clubs for illustration it wherever kids could create into a superior hooper successful the U.K. So he created a program, built the civilization and focused connected improvement complete transactional coaching which helped style his ain hoops journey. Within 2 years he had 8 inferior teams, and by his 3rd year, the elder squad won a nationalist title.

Then came stints astatine NBA Europe, successful Belgium, Italy, Paris, wherever he was capable to style his method pinch younker hoops teams by seeing what worked and what needed scrapping. By the clip he landed a domiciled pinch Rip City Remix – the Trailblazers’ G-League squad – the Cleveland Cavaliers hired him wherever he moved into an adjunct coach position drafting up out-of-timeout plays and building believe plans nether caput coach, Kenny Atkinson. It was there, he says, that mentation started to go style.

"The logic why he kept giving maine much and much was because I was ever the 1 to situation and to speak out," Sarama said. “I was ever the 1 successful the coach gathering to say, I disagree, I deliberation that's a bad idea, this is why.”

Basketball trainer and advisor

Noah LaRoche

, who antecedently worked pinch the Memphis Grizzlies, Victor Wembanyama, Paul George and different NBA stars, was hired by the Miami Heat to reconstruct their discourtesy done CLA concepts. He told the media, “You don’t thatch it. They (the players) study it done the situation you design.” When Sarama started astatine Cleveland, he was 1 of the only coaches successful the NBA experimenting pinch CLA; he estimates astir six teams person taken it up since. But he doesn’t expect Portland's attack to expanse the convention anytime soon. He says that CLA won’t activity if you don’t person system violative and protect principles. Donaldson is likewise measured astir the timeline successful the WNBA.

"I don’t deliberation we're wrong the three-to-five-year scope of this becoming incredibly mainstream, but I do deliberation much and much coaches, trainers are becoming much funny astir benignant of what this is," she said. “Change doesn't hap overnight. The higher up you are the harder it is to research and effort thing caller because yet you person to triumph games, and it mightiness look risky to effort thing caller erstwhile you person to win.”

Looking backmost connected the play truthful far, coach Sarama said the team’s first ever WNBA triumph was special. In early May, Portland’s Sarah Ashley Barker made a putback bucket connected the buzzer to hit New York; Bridget Carleton was ascendant pinch a career-high 26 points, pinch 5 triples. Later that month, connected location court, the Fire hit Indiana by 16 points successful a crippled that Sarama said showed impervious of conception and really they tin compete pinch anyone successful the league.

While the play mightiness not extremity pinch Portland winning the title aliases making the playoffs, Sarama’s dedication to his programme is fueled by the improvement of his players and squad growth, which he hopes will lead to further occurrence and elevate their hoops crippled successful the years to come.

“I deliberation if we've established a really bully baseline pinch a halfway group of players, and we're adding to that, that's that's really gonna help,” he said. “For me, the astir important point is the improvement of the players individually. So seeing that and past conscionable continuing to spot the growth, because I deliberation that's gonna springiness america a awesome instauration to build on.”