Toronto Tempo star Marina Mabrey remains somewhat of a mystery.
The team’s core player, signed to a max two-year, $2.4 million US contract in April, missed both pre-season games with a back injury, but is expected to be ready for the Tempo’s first regular season game Friday against the Washington Mystics.
Mabrey has been courtside at Toronto Raptors games and spoken publicly on multiple occasions, but has yet to wear the Tempo jersey in a game.
So let’s allow her former Connecticut Sun coach, Rachid Meziane, to explain a little more.
“She’s crazy. I mean, crazy in a good way,” Meziane said. “She is someone that’s easy to love because she plays with a lot of energy and she’s a competitive player. She is someone who likes to win and she will do everything on the floor to win.”
Which is exactly what the Tempo are aiming to do in their inaugural season.
The team, which announced a landmark national broadcasting deal with Bell Media on Tuesday, is built in its star player’s image.
Followers of the WNBA will remember Mabrey from her scuffle with Caitlin Clark last season. She’s had similar dust-ups with other stars like Diana Taurasi and Skylar Diggins-Smith.
On the court, few are more competitive. It takes opponents by surprise.
“She can be a scorer, she can be the facilitator, she is a good player, so you are lucky to have her,” Meziane said.
Mabrey, for her part, seems to be staying even keel for now on her expectations in Toronto.
“I think just being patient. There’s standards and little details we want to meet — being on time, running our sets, being in the right spots and gaps defensively, things like that, where those start to add up to wins,” Mabrey said during training camp.
“But when you expect something right away to be put together, that’s sort of unrealistic.”
Unrealistic — until it isn’t. After all, it was just last season that the Golden State Valkyries became the first team to reach the playoffs in their first season.
Tempo head coach Sandy Brondello allowed for a little more imagination than Mabrey on her expectations.
“Win the day. Get better every single day. Don’t take too many steps backwards. We are an expansion team, so we have realistic expectations there, but with time, what kind of team can we look like?” Brondello said.
“And then having a little bit more information of what we have, what do we need as we move forward. But being adaptable and flexible. I’m not rigid in how we’re gonna coach. Lean into the players, what they feel and see out there as well.”
No one is necessarily expecting the Tempo to compete for a championship in Year 1, but president Teresa Resch and general manager Monica Wright Rogers did not build the franchise with an eye strictly toward the future.
Consensus among league experts has the Tempo in the mix to make like the Valkyries and reach the playoffs.
Brondello, a two-time champion coach, isn’t the stereotypical developmental leader of a young team. In fact, she compared herself to four-time NBA champion coach Steve Kerr.
“We’ve both won. We’ve been in every situation as a player, so I think that kind of helps us understand the situation players are in and learning your role, whatever that may be. I like his style, giving freedom to my players to do who they are and try to put them in the best spots they can be in,” Brondello said.
“I think my record speaks for itself. I’ve always had pretty good offensive teams with great players and that’s obviously the challenge now.”
Brondello’s offensive system has been described as space and pace. Veteran guard Brittney Sykes said it is less structural and more reading the defence and reacting accordingly.
It will likely involve plenty of three-point attempts — the team put up 55 of them in two pre-season games, a rate that would have placed fourth in the league last year, right in line with Brondello’s New York Liberty.
Mabrey put up seven per game herself last season, one of only four players to reach that mark, though Brondello will surely want to see her accuracy rise from last year’s outlier 27 per cent. Mabrey shoots 34.7 per cent from deep for her career and sat above that mark in four of five previous seasons.
Alongside top expansion pick Julie Allemand, Mabrey received votes in the WNBA GM survey released Tuesday as player most likely to have a breakout season.
The only Tempo player to finish first in any survey question was Sykes, who had 31 per cent of the vote on “Which player is the most athletic?” She was also voted the second-best perimeter defender in the league.
Sykes, 32, is a two-time steals leader, which should fit well with Brondello’s aggressive defensive scheme. Her 14.1 points per game last season ranked second on the Tempo to Mabrey’s 14.4.
“We know what we can do offensively. It’s defensively that if we’re having a bad night, teams cannot score. That has to be the goal,” Sykes said.
Sykes, Mabrey, Allemand and Canada’s Kia Nurse make up the veteran core of the team, but there are plenty of younger talents also, including forwards Nyara Sabally and Temi Fagbenle.
There’s also guard Kiki Rice of UCLA, who was selected sixth overall with the Tempo’s first-ever entry-draft selection.
The WNBA draft took place Monday in New York City and Toronto Tempo selected UCLA’s Kiki Rice in the sixth pick in the opening round.
Brondello said Rice had her “welcome to the WNBA” moment in her first pre-season game, but the team has been impressed by her competitiveness and poise through training camp — a theme among the younger group, per Mabrey.
“They’re aggressive, they’re yelling, they’re screaming, they’re getting stops. The competitiveness I’m shocked about because sometimes when [young players] first come in, they’re baby deer-ish, but they’re full of personality,” Mabrey said.
Similarly, even while there’s been some public tip-toeing around the Tempo’s goals this season, it is not hard to parse what they may have in mind.
This is a team that understands all that comes with an inaugural season and acknowledges the tough road ahead. It’s also one that’s willing to take it head-on.
“Be quick,” Brondello said, “but don’t hurry.”
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