After two years of talk, the reality of the WNBA in Toronto finally arrived on Friday.
Through all the pre-game pomp and circumstance, it felt most real as players were introduced and we put faces to names in blue-and-purple Tempo jerseys. For many involved in the project, it had all come together in this moment.
It felt real again when Brittney Sykes poured in the first basket in team history, a mid-range jumper on the team’s first offensive possession.
And then it felt real once more as Julie Allemand drained Toronto’s first three-pointer, leading one man sitting underneath the excess media section to exclaim, “I’ll remember that. Nurse to Allemand, first three in Tempo history.”
There are plenty more firsts still to come for the Tempo, but the most immediate is a win.
Toronto lost both of its exhibition games, and it fought valiantly amid shooting woes against the Washington Mystics in the home opener, but ultimately felt short there too despite briefly holding a late lead.
The Washington Mystics won 68-65, spoiling the Toronto Tempo’s WNBA debut.
Losing? That’s a different kind of reality — one many expansion teams must live with, but also one this particular franchise does not seem willing to accept.
“I want to win really bad,” said star Marina Mabrey, who led the team with 27 points and played to the crowd as she produced big moments down the stretch. “I know if I can bring that kind of energy, it can be contagious for everyone.”
The game against Washington showed both the Tempo’s path to winning and exposed some weaknesses.
If the Tempo are going to have any success, it will start with Mabrey, the team’s core player and best bet to reach the all-star game. Among her 27 points, the 29-year-old shot 12-for-14 from the free-throw line and six-for-18 from the field — including a ghastly one-for-seven first half.
After halftime, Mabrey took matters into her own hands, found a rhythm and knocked down a go-ahead triple with 4:19 remaining.
“We don’t want a steady diet of that, though,” Mabrey said. “I’m taking stepback 30-footers and [Sykes] is taking layups with a lot of people trying to block it. While it’s great to make those sometimes and we need that at the end of the clock, I don’t know if in the middle of the offence that’s really what we want.
“So we want to clean that up and get better shots for us and also if you look at the shot chart, we want other people to shoot too.”
Allemand, for example, hoisted just two field-goal attempts in 30 minutes of action, while Canada’s Kia Nurse had just one shot in 10 minutes.
Canada’s first WNBA team, the Toronto Tempo, opened its inaugural season Friday night against the Washington Mystics before a sold-out home crowd. Players and fans say the debut marks a major milestone for women’s sports in Canada.
As a whole, the offence struggled throughout what head coach Sandy Brondello called an “ugly” game, shooting 27 per cent from the field and 20 per cent from deep.
As currently built, the Tempo are reliant on guards such as Mabrey and Sykes to provide scoring. There is little frontcourt depth behind starters Nyara Sabally and Temi Fagbenle, who combined for just 10 points and seven rebounds.
On the other end, Mystics forwards Shakira Austin and Kiki Iriafen teamed up for a whopping 30 points and 27 rebounds.
“The physicality bothered us a fair bit,” Brondello said. “We were our own worst enemy of we held the ball too long and their post players were very intimidating at the rim, so I think when we got downhill we just had to probably finish or find the open man a little bit more. I think we … forced too many mid-rangers, which is not a great shot in the game.”
Back on the positive side of the ledger, Brondello praised a defence that limited the Mystics to 68 points on 39 per cent shooting from the field while forcing 18 turnovers.
However, those fumbles led to just 11 points in transition, a number Brondello said ideally would be closer to 20.
“We just gotta get back to being a selfless basketball team and making our defence create our offence,” Brondello said.
After a five-day break including practices Monday and Tuesday, the Tempo will dive into the deep end of the season with games every other day starting Wednesday against the Seattle Storm, spanning a three-game road trip to Los Angeles and Phoenix and ending back home May 23 against the Portland Fire.
If all goes well by the end of that gruelling stretch, most of the marquee franchise firsts will already be in the rear-view mirror.
Sleeping giant in Brampton
By Sunday, every CEBL team will have played its first game of the season, and we’ll have a better idea of contenders and pretenders.
In the West, the Winnipeg Sea Bears staked an early claim with a tight victory over the Edmonton Stingers, led by former MVP Teddy Allen — and without incoming three-time MVP Xavier Moon.
Back east, the Brampton Honey Badgers made big headlines off the court with the arrival of Mark Cuban as a part-owner. But while that’s good for publicity, the team will need to win to sustain that momentum.
Good thing it seems poised to do just that.
The Honey Badgers mended fences by importing former Battle of Alberta rivals Sean East II and Keon Ambrose-Hylton from Edmonton along with Jameer Nelson Jr. from Calgary. East II was MVP runner-up last year, while Nelson won Defensive Player of the Year.
It might take some time for East II and Nelson Jr. — the son of longtimer NBAer Jameer Nelson — to find their backcourt chemistry, but once they do, the combination could prove lethal.
Their first test will be a good one Friday against the Ottawa BlackJacks (CBC Gem, 7:30 p.m. ET), who return the core of a team that went 12-12 last season and had a late surge undone by some untimely absences in the playoffs.
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