Tempo Takeaways: Identity shaping, fandom in full effect
TORONTO — With the first pre-season game in the books, and just days till wins and losses start to count, the Toronto Tempo’s inaugural campaign is well on its way.
The expansion franchise has already made plenty of history — like Hamilton, Ont. native Kia Nurse scoring the first points in franchise history — on its path to the 2026 WNBA regular season. And if Wednesday’s sellout exhibition-opener was any indication, there are more milestone moments ahead.
All of which will be navigated at a breakneck pace as Opening Night on the league’s 30th anniversary rapidly approaches, following a truncated off-season. Even more precarious for Toronto and Portland, who had to manoeuvre building their rosters from scratch.
And in the time since both franchises said hello to their first players, the goodbyes have already begun. The Tempo made their first cuts of training camp on Thursday and will have to trim what’s currently a group of 16 players to just 12 (plus two developmental spots).
While that leaves uncertainty about what head coach Sandy Brondello’s squad will look like come the Tempo’s season opener on May 8, there have been tidbits of insight into what fans can expect from Canada’s first WNBA team.
Early expectations
When Brondello, a two-time champion, left the New York Liberty to helm the expansion Tempo, there was a sense that the team might not slow-play its ascent towards competitive relevance.
That she’s never missed the playoffs as a bench boss, playing a role in that noise. But Brondello has not been shy about setting the record straight that “we are an expansion team, so we have realistic expectations there.”
While it’s true that head coach Natalie Nakase led the Golden State Valkyries to the playoffs in their inaugural season last year, the feat serves as the exception, not the norm — the first WNBA expansion squad to make the post-season in Year 1.
Based on the league’s current 44-game scale, expansion teams have averaged approximately 10.6 wins (.240) in their first seasons.
Hence why Brondello’s been more focused on short-term achievements.
“Win the day,” the Tempo head coach said after practice last week. “Don’t take too many steps backwards … with time, what kind of team can we look like?”
Identifying an identity
While there’s no pressure on climbing the standings right away, Brondello has prioritized her “expectations” of establishing a culture, and that it needs to be player-led.
“They have to decide, what do we want to be known for?” she explained.
And it took little probing to learn that the Tempo plan to hang their hat on “defence.”
“You’re going to need (defence) to win championships,” Brittney Sykes said. “Now that we’re here with the Tempo, we’re (focused on) defence. We know what we can do offensively; it’s defensively that, if we’re having a bad night (offensively), teams cannot score. That has to be the goal, and that’s what we’re taking as our identity.”
While Sykes, a two-time steals champ and four-time all-defence member, wasn’t on the court Wednesday, the Tempo managed to demonstrate their potential as a defensive unit. Toronto forced Connecticut into 26 turnovers, 14 of which came off steals. Players stepped into gaps, dug in on drives and rolls, and routinely fronted on post-entry looks to generate copious deflections. And if that sounds familiar, that’s because it is.
“If you saw the Raptors … we want to be a great defensive team like that,” Brondello told reporters at media day. “How connected they were, how hard they competed.”
The similarities to Toronto’s other basketball team don’t stop there.
While Brondello is focused on running a five-out offence, the spacing-centric scheme follows similar principles to Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic’s “0.5” style. Her version uses the “three-second rule” to motivate ball movement and continuous motion while playing outside-in.
“You see the versatility of our players,” Brondello said. “We call them basketball players, they’re not just (one position) … I think that’s so important here.”
Although the Aussie bench boss mentioned her team will need time to gel to execute their offence consistently, she did want to remind folks that “my record speaks for itself.”
And Brondello has a point. Her teams have boasted a top-five offence in eight of her 12 years as a head coach — including the WNBA’s No. 1 scoring attack on two occasions. When she took over the Phoenix Mercury in 2014, she helped them go from fourth to first; granted, that group included DeWanna Bonner, Brittney Griner and Diana Taurasi. In her first season with New York (2022), the Liberty owned the fourth-lowest offensive rating, but catapulted to No. 2 by the next year.
Million-dollar matriarchs
To call Marina Mabrey and Brittney Sykes (A.K.A. Slim) joining forces in Toronto a full-circle moment would be quite the understatement.
The duo of New Jersey natives have been around each other since their early teens and “were in the trenches together,” according to Mabrey, reflecting not only on their many workouts together growing up, but also their many encounters as opponents in the WNBA.
Now, the pair form the league’s first-ever seven-figure backcourt after both were signed to two-year max contracts. And Brondello has been vocal about Sykes and Mabrey being viewed as leaders, along with being cornerstone players.
While there is certainly an added weight that comes with increased roles and salaries, neither seems phased by the spotlight.
“Joe Mazzulla (Boston Celtics head coach) says ‘pressure is a privilege,’ and I think it’s the truth,” Sykes explained. “This is something that, ultimately, we want. We’ve been chasing after it … to be in this position.”
Mabrey echoed those sentiments, acknowledging that she’s excited to “unlock” her abilities in a leadership role: “I think what makes good players great is making other people better, and I think that’s something I want to tap into here in Toronto.”
Sykes and Mabrey have said they take turns as the vocal leader and the lead-by-example veteran during practice, trading places when necessary. That level of cohesion and balance will certainly be needed on the court as well. And although neither led any of their previous teams in scoring for a full season, the starting backcourt appears up to the task.
“Both of us, we’re underdogs,” Mabrey said. “So, having the Tempo take a chance on both of us, knowing what we bring to the table, and the players we are … I wouldn’t call it a weight, I would say responsibility, and also a privilege … we’re going to try to bring the team up as much as we can.”
Fan frenzy
Although much will change between now and the end of the Tempo’s first season, one thing the organization hopes will remain the same is the fan support.
With over 8,000 fans at the Coca-Cola Coliseum on Wednesday, the building was rocking from opening tip to the final horn. An atmosphere buzzing with “energy” that was “really tangible,” as Maddy Lagasca, who attended the pre-season opener with a friend she grew up playing basketball with, explained.
“(The Tempo) went on a run to finish the second quarter, and the crowd gave them a standing ovation into the locker room … it made me so happy to see so many women and girls supporting the team.”
It’s safe to say those feelings weren’t uncommon, as Natasha Cyrille, who was also in attendance on Wednesday, noted: “It’s clear there’s an appetite for professional women’s sports in Canada … the essence of sport is to bring people together … and I think we’re seeing that already with the Tempo.”
The magnitude of the moment has not been lost on the players either, namely Nurse, who’s confident this season — and those to come — will have a lasting impact on sport in this country.
“I think in 10 to 15 years, you’re going to look back and see all these young women who are on the national team, and when you have a conversation with them about where their love for basketball, their influence comes, they’ll be Tempo kids.
“That is where the massive influence I think this franchise will have in women’s sports … You’ll be able to field an entire Olympic roster from WNBA players (in the future) because these will be Tempo-influenced players … it’s not going anywhere, and it’s going to create such a massive influx of talent and desire for basketball.”
Bonus takeaways
Welcome to the W: It was always a matter of when and not if Kiki Rice and Teonni Key would have their “welcome to the league” moment. And it’s likely both rookies hope Wednesday meant that milestone is over with after neither got going in their pro debuts. While Rice, the No. 6 pick and first in franchise history, looked more comfortable as the game progressed, dealing with the “pace and physicality” of the WNBA, as she described, will take time. The UCLA product finished with five points on 2-of-5 shooting, with two assists, a steal and three turnovers.
Meanwhile, Key had the unenviable task of trying to keep Griner in check and fouled out after 17 scoreless minutes. The forward did show craft as a screener and even stepped up to force a stop along the perimeter.
International intrigue: While the Tempo plan to be “Canada’s team,” as president Teresa Resrch has pointed out, they will also appeal to fanbases across multiple borders. The team added seven players in its initial expansion draft, and although not all will stick around, there are a couple who could end up making a notable impact.
Brondello has already said Julie Allemand, the Tempo’s first expansion-draft pick, will have a significant role this season. The Belgian could form a three-guard pairing with Mabrey and Sykes, right on the heels of winning EuroLeague final six MVP. There’s also Maria Conde, whom assistant GM Eli Horowitz described as “one of the best players in all of Europe who’s never been in the WNBA.” Brondello said the Spaniard is “ready” to make the jump and referred to her as a “big wing” who is “very versatile.”
Look out for Lexi: A player who certainly stood out in the Tempo’s pre-season opener was Lexi Held, who finished with a team-high 21 points on 7-of-10 shooting, five made triples, two assists, two steals and a block in 21 minutes of action. After a training-camp stint with the Sky in 2022, the guard spent two years playing overseas before making her WNBA debut with the Phoenix Mercury last season. She averaged 5.3 points in just under 15 minutes a game through 32 appearances, but if she can continue to flash the two-way prowess seen on Wednesday, a larger opportunity may be in store.
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