There has to be a beginning and here it was.
Referee Clare Simmons moved to the centre of a sold-out Coca-Cola Coliseum, an arena originally built in 1921 for agriculture fairs that has since morphed into a charming hockey barn. The WNBA official brought the fire orange and white ball to the top of her hands.
All eyes were now on the court, a slick floor draped in the team’s colours, Borealis Blue and Tempo Bordeaux. Temi Fagbenle touched the bottom of both her sneakers and went into tip mode for the Toronto Tempo. Shakira Austin was opposite her, coiled and ready to jump for the Washington Mystics. The sell-out crowd of 8,210 was amped. Here we go.
Mark down the moment — 7:34 p.m. Eastern Time on a Friday night in Toronto. That’s when the WNBA’s first season in Canada officially began. History will note that guard Brittney Sykes scored the first-ever points for Tempo on a jumper from just over the free-throw line.
Brittney Sykes opens the scoring for the Toronto Tempo, Canada’s first WNBA franchise, with a jump shot against the Washington Mystics.
The game was tight, a kaleidoscope of emotions, everything you could ask for in an inaugural game. Marina Mabrey’s two free throws with 32.1 seconds left put Toronto up 65-64 but four clutch free throws from Austin, who signed an offer sheet with the Tempo in the offseason only to see the Mystics match it, was the difference along with some choppy late-game execution from the home team.
The final score was 68-65 Mystics but it really won’t matter in the long term. Everything about the night was a celebration. Free t-shirts were draped on each seat commemorating opening night. Prime Minister Mark Carney sent out warm wishes in social media in both English and French.
They honoured great Canadian women’s basketball players of the past, pioneers such as Tammy Sutton-Brown and called them “Day Ones” for laying the foundations of women’s basketball in the country.
Tempo guard Kia Nurse, the face of Canada women’s basketball for years, got a huge pop from the crowd as they introduced the entire squad. Tempo wing Maria Conde, long thought to be one of the best international players never to have played in the league, said before the game that her mother had set an alarm clock to wake up at 1:30 a.m. ET Madrid time for her daughter’s WNBA debut. (The expansion team in Toronto has at least one fan in Spain.)
Raptors players Sandro Mamukelashvili and Immanuel Quickley were in attendance, as was former Raptors president Masai Ujuri, now part of the Tempo’s ownership group in addition to his new Dallas Mavericks job. Track star Andre DeGrasse made it too, as did members of the PWHL’s Toronto Sceptres, who share the arena, and former Raptors Serge Ibaka and Chris Boucher. Soccer icon Christine Sinclair got a massive ovation when they showed her on the Jumbotron at the start of the fourth quarter.
The PR staff of the Tempo said they received 72 media credential requests for the game — the official media count was 43. There was chatter during the day that former U.S. president and noted basketball fan Barack Obama might make it to the game given he was in town as the keynote speaker for Canada 2020’s 20th Anniversary Gala at nearby Fairmont Hotel — and the Tempo did reach out — but it didn’t come to pass. Aim big, you know?
The moment had me thinking about another significant day in Canada’s women’s sports history. Three years ago in Toronto Scotiabank Arena hosted the first WNBA game in Canada, a preseason game between the Minnesota Lynx and the Chicago Sky that sold out 19,800 tickets within minutes of going on sale. There were signs in the crowd such as “Future season ticket holder” and it seemed every shot on the Jumbotron showed young girls screaming their hearts out.
But this is what really stood out that day for me. There were 122 media credentials issued for the game — including yours truly — and I remember watching WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert enter a swelled media room for a news conference. You had to have your eyes on Englebert but if you did, what you saw is she let out an audible “wow” when she saw the large contingent.
I talked to a couple of WNBA officials after that game who said they were blown away by the fervor for the WNBA in Toronto. They didn’t expect it at that level — and I know that stayed with Engelbert and her key people. I’ll tell you someone else who was prescient – Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve nailed it at the time. She said people would look back on the exhibition game in Canada as a pivotal moment in the league’s expansion footprint. She was right.
Engelbert was back in Toronto on Friday night. She met with a handful of reporters at Toronto’s NBA offices about three hours before the game.
“It’s a little emotional today for me,” Engelbert said. “I’ve gone to Toronto plenty of times in my prior life but as the WNBA Commissioner I was here right as the pandemic hit. I think it was February 2020 because we were actually going to announce we were doing a preseason game here that year. Obviously the world blew up in the pandemic. So it’s kind of emotional to be here for the tip of the first Toronto Tempo game. It’s a great sign and signal not just for Toronto and Canada but globally and internationally.
“This is our first foray for the W outside of the United States and one thing that stood out for me when we did preseason games here was authenticity and passion the fans had for the game,” she continued. “[Canadian] Bridget Carleton was the one Canadian on Minnesota in the 2022 game and I was so blown away by fans coming up to me saying like you made my dreams come true. I was like because we brought Minnesota and Chicago here? It wasn’t a Toronto team or Canada team. We then went on to host sellout games in Edmonton and Vancouver [a 2025 regular season game]. I know it’s just going to be just a great market for the WNBA.”
There has been an explosion of basketball interest in Toronto, a Canada-wide explosion, really, since the Raptors won their title in 2019. The women’s game is part of that. When I first started covering women’s college basketball for Sports Illustrated in the early 2000s, you could see the beginnings of a new athleticism and skill set with players such as Diana Taurasi, Candace Parker and Brittney Griner.
The explosion happened the next decade — Maya Moore personified this excellence – and the talent pool started to spread out beyond perennial powers UConn, Notre Dame and Tennessee. In 2009, I covered a title game between UConn and Louisville that averaged 2.67 million viewers on ESPN. South Carolina’s win over Iowa in the 2024 title game averaged 18.9 million viewers as Caitlin Clark became a household sports name. This year UCLA, with six WNBA picks, won the NCAA title. The starting point guard on that team, Kiki Rice, is now a member of the Tempo.
There are numerous data points that suggest the Tempo will succeed long term. First, Tempo owner Larry Tannenbaum is a billionaire (a very important word in sports) who believes in the product. Ownership announced last month that the franchise is partnering with the City of Toronto to build a world-class training centre that will also feature the first WNBA facility in North America to include dedicated community access and programming.
Every star player in the league has discussed the importance of such a facility — it’s how you attract free agents — and the performance centre will feature two WNBA regulation courts, state-of-the-art locker room, salon and vanity spaces, a mother’s room, dedicated sports medicine, sports performance, and recovery areas, hydrotherapy pools, a sauna, a wellness consult room, advanced recovery areas, expansive player lounges, a dining area, a fully-equipped theatre for film study and conference rooms and offices for the organization’s personnel.
In exchange for a proposed long-term lease on City-owned land, the facility will feature two full-sized indoor basketball courts and changerooms, outdoor recreation amenities including two outdoor courts and a mini-pitch, new park space, and public washrooms. The $100 million facility will be fully founded by Tannenbaum. You win with money and Tannenbaum has a lot of it.
But it’s going to take time, at least on the court. How do you build a winning culture when the majority of the teams have more talent than you do? On Friday night, the Tempo suffered from what will be a season-long issue — the difference-makers in the frontcourt are on other teams. Austin and forward Kiki Iriafen had 27 rebounds between them. Can you get season ticket membership to buy-in again if it’s a losing season? Can you make the game experience feel like an event regardless of the score? Will media outlets commit to covering the team for the long haul?
As an organization, the Tempo were determined to put on a competitive product in Year One. General manager Monica Wright Rogers, a terrific player during her playing days, said she was not built to approach it any other way. Tanenbaum also demanded it. To that end, the organization signed unrestricted free agent Marina Mabrey and Sykes, a three-time All-Star guard, and upon signing two-year deals, the pair became the first-known million-dollar backcourt under the WNBA’s new collective bargaining agreement. (The other expansion franchise, Portland, has opted for a longer timeline and will likely be the worst team in the league this year).
Brondello, a two-time WNBA champion as a coach, walked an interesting line with reporters during training camp. She talked about having a roster that might compete for a playoff spot while reminding people regularly this is an expansion team.
“It’s going to be hard, but we have to embrace hard,” Brondelo said in her postgame press conference. “We have to be uncomfortable before we can get comfortable.”
Friday night was always going to be a celebration, win or lose. Now comes the grind — and there will be plenty of losses along the way, especially in Year One. But everything is in place for sustained success in Canada. The league overall is flush with U.S. television money and the Tempo have a deep-pocketed owner, a Hall of Fame coach and a talented group of front office people. When Brondello was asked on Friday night if the franchise was going to succeed, she didn’t hesitate.
“I think the future is bright — I already know what it is,” Brondello said. “If you’ve seen the evolution of the WNBA over the last 30 years, it’s quite remarkable. I’ve witnessed it. This is my 27th year in the league as a player and as a coach and I’m very proud of just the progress that we’ve made. The players are getting paid the right way and the amount of people that love watching the WNBA makes it a real movement. Sponsors are getting behind us.
“We’ve got the whole country behind us and we all see that as a great opportunity for us to grow this game.”
One night in the books — and a fun one at that. Welcome to the WNBA in Toronto.
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