PORTLAND, Ore. -- This could be the year when the Portland Fire stop playing like a bumbling expansion team and put themselves in position to make the playoffs.

	The Fire hope Ukari Figgs' experience and skills will help lift Portland to the playoffs.

If the Fire get there, they'll be lifted by the repaired shooting hand of second-year star Jackie Stiles. But a bigger factor will be her backcourt partner, Ukari Figgs, who has visited the heights that Portland hopes to climb one day.

Figgs was the starting point guard for the WNBA-champion Los Angeles Sparks last season, but she was traded to Portland on draft day for aging veteran Sophia Witherspoon and the Fire's first-round choice, North Carolina's Nikki Teasley.

Figgs has had an immediate impact during Portland's training camp, and the team's improvement should be evident when they open the season Wednesday night against the New York Liberty at the Rose Garden.

"I don't know how we got her, but I'm just so thankful that we did,'' Stiles said. "We just feel so blessed that we have her on this team, because she makes everybody better.''

The Fire probably wouldn't have made the trade at all if last year's starting point guard, Tully Bevilaqua, had been in camp. Bevilaqua is under contract to her team in Hungary until its season is over. She isn't due back in the United States until June 4, two days before Portland's fifth game.

In her absence, Figgs has taken over, and her teammates are raving about her court sense and leadership. In an exhibition game in Sacramento on May 11, Portland led by 18 but let the Monarchs rally to tie it at 59. Figgs wouldn't let her team lose, and Portland went on a 15-1 run to end the game.

Figgs' experience should forestall the late-game collapses that characterized last season, when they started 8-4 but lost 17 of their final 20 games. They finished with 11 victories, just one more than they had in 2000, the year they joined the league.

"I think our team is right there on the brink of doing some great things,'' Figgs said.

Stiles, the NCAA's career scoring leader at Southwest Missouri State, was the league's rookie of the year last season after averaging 14.9 points. But she wore down as the season went on, playing through an injured right wrist. Before she had surgery, doctors discovered she'd broken her left wrist, but that injury had healed enough.

Stiles said her right wrist has been stiffening up during camp, but she's learning to play through it. On the plus side, the injuries forced her to hit the weight room, and she's noticeably more muscular.

	Jackie Stiles has worked on her passing and defense, and is noticeably more muscular this season.

She also has worked on her passing and defense, finally realizing that WNBA defenders are never going to let her score at will like she did in college.

"I've seen a transformation in her game,'' said center Sylvia Crawley. "This year, when she drives and the help comes, she sees it, she kicks it to me or Kristin (Folkl) or DeMya (Walker), and we hit a wide-open shot.''

Coach and general manager Linda Hargrove has shaken up the rotation by making second-year player LaQuanda Barksdale the starter at small forward. Barksdale appeared in just five games as a rookie. Walker, who's 6-foot-3, will get a chance at power forward after averaging only 5.4 points last year.

The logjam of forwards was freed up a little when Hargrove traded Vanessa Nygaard to Miami. Folkl, Stacey Thomas, rookie Amber Hall and a slimmed-down Alisa Burras should give the Fire more of an inside presence.

Of Hargrove, Crawley said, "Bottom line: She wants to win. She needs to win to keep her job, so she's doing everything that she can to make this a better team.''

In the backcourt, 5-6 Tamicha Jackson will back up Figgs, which likely will leave Bevilaqua as the odd player out when she returns. Carolyn Young, who struggled to come back from a serious knee injury that forced her to sit out all of 2000, should benefit from the trade of Witherspoon and become Stiles' backup.

While Portland is realistically a year or two away from threatening the established teams in the Western Conference, the two convincing preseason wins over Sacramento have brought an air of confidence.

"You don't want to get too excited too early, but it just feels like this is a special group,'' Stiles said.

Hargrove is reserving judgment.

"My husband called me the other night after we beat Sacramento and he goes, 'Dang, are you guys good or what?' I'm going, 'I don't know,' " she said. "We're playing pretty well right now."