The Portland Fire is set to play the team's first season in the WNBA in 2026 with coach Alex Sarama bringing his Constraints-Led Approach (CLA) to the league.
If that's not a familiar term, it's okay — it's pretty new to a lot of people. But, as it turns out, it's not unfamiliar to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Sarama helped Kenny Atkinson apply the coaching style to the team, and the Cavs ended up enjoying a successful season that resulted in 64 wins (the second-highest in the history of the team).
How the CLA style of coaching worked for the Cavs
Part of Sarama's stated objectives include creating "psychological safety" for the player he leads. That's something former Cavaliers player Isaac Okoro knows a lot about, and in an interview with CBS Sports he broke down the impact of Sarama's time with the team and how the CLA style helped.
Okoro revealed to the news organization he was the first NBA player Sarama worked with, which gives him especially valuable insight into what Portland players and fans can expect. He admitted that he had never heard of CLA before meeting Sarama, and he said that something that immediately made the style of coaching different is that he was "implementing different situations that will happen in the game while you're doing it in the drills."
Sarama is also "good with criticism," Okoro added. "There would be certain things that I didn't like and there would be certain things that I did like and he would accept it," he explained. "The things I didn't like, we'd stop doing them and the things I did like, we'd keep doing them."
The coach doesn't bring ego into the equation when he's leading a team, Okoro also said, "There would be certain things that I didn't like and there would be certain things that I did like and he would accept it. The things I didn't like, we'd stop doing them and the things I did like, we'd keep doing them."
Alex Sarama is a "very big analytics guy"
At the heart of CLA seems to be a focus on analytics, which Okoro said Sarama puts a lot of emphasis on. He explained, "It could be about setting screens – what are my percentiles setting screens – or catch-and-shoot shots, or corner shots. Everything was analytical. Like, am I better going left or going right? Everything I was doing was analytical."
Sarama will have a lot to prove as a new coach in the WNBA, and joining the league will be a new test for the system that appears to have worked well for him so far. After all, the men's and women's games are different — but understanding those differences and making it work seems like a challenge he will be open to meeting.