The Portland Fire have signed forward Bridget Carleton after selecting her first overall in the 2026 WNBA Expansion Draft.
Carleton has spent nearly the entirety of her career with Minnesota, playing all but four games in her seven-year WNBA career with the Lynx. After primarily coming off the bench most of her career, Carleton took over a starting job in 2024 and resumed that role last summer.
In all 44 regular season games, Carleton impacted the game in numerous ways, even ways that don’t always show up on the stat sheet. Still, she managed to average 6.5 PPG, 3.6 RPG, 2.0 APG and 0.8 SPG over 27.9 MPG and shooting marks of 40.2 percent from the field and 37.3 percent from three.
Carleton is the type of player that you know there is more there and she is capable of providing more than we’ve seen to this point, and perhaps 2026 will be that breakout season. Regardless, she is a player that holds things together and impacts every area of the game when she’s on the floor.
