In a kinder world, WNBA expansion teams are allowed to flail and muck about in peace for a few years before anyone pays close attention to them. But this is an unkind world, one that finds the Golden State Valkyries second in the standings and headed to the playoffs for the second time in their two years of existence. You can understand why a Toronto Tempo fan might have been hoping for something more in the team’s inaugural season.
For the last time the Tempo won a game, you’ll need to go back to July 12, when they hosted the New York Liberty and eked out a victory, 93-91, despite leading by 20 points late in the third quarter. (Frankly, beating the Liberty shouldn’t even count.) Toronto’s 93-82 loss to the Mystics on Wednesday night extended their losing streak to 12 games and dropped their record to 10-25 with nine left to play.
What’s gone wrong? By typical expansion-team standards, nothing really. But it did seem like the Tempo assembled their team with higher ambitions this past offseason. Unlike expansion classmate Portland or Golden State last year, the Tempo made big plays in the free-agent market, signing Marina Mabrey and Brittney Sykes to two-year max contracts, a multimillion-dollar backcourt to inaugurate the new CBA. When their offer-sheet play for Washington Mystics center Shakira Austin didn’t work, they also gave a $1 million contract to the expansion-coded Temi Fagbenle, who played for Golden State last season. “How quickly are you all looking to compete in a league that continues to grow in this golden era of talent?” ESPN’s Malika Andrews asked Tempo GM Monica Wright Rogers after the expansion draft in April. “The goal is to do that right away,” Wright Rogers answered.
For a while, that didn’t seem like an impossible goal. The Tempo hovered at or just above .500 to start the year, with a chance at the eighth playoff spot. Fans in Toronto are surely happy to have any WNBA team to root for, but the Tempo’s brutal injury luck has soured the mood. Their two frontcourt players with significant injury histories, Nyara Sabally and Isabelle Harrison, indeed both suffered injuries. Fagbenle has been in and out with a shoulder issue. Rookie guard Kiki Rice returned to the lineup recently after missing nearly two months with an ankle sprain. And Sykes, who’d also been on pace for a career-high scoring season, missed 18 games with a plantar fascia injury before returning Tuesday. The schedule has played a part in their recent skid, too: Since the All-Star break, they’ve played just two home games and seen the Valkyries and Lynx each twice.
It’s not exactly clear who came out on top in the Sandy Brondello divorce. The Liberty team that let her go this offseason is now older, thinner, and plagued with injury issues of their own. The Tempo bear some of the same frustrating hallmarks of their head coach’s former teams—this defense, without the transcendence of Breanna Stewart to cover up everyone’s mistakes, is on pace to be historically awful. By defensive rating, they're 13th-ranked in the league at 113.3, almost four points higher than 12th-worst Los Angeles. But the frontcourt injuries account for a lot of that. They also account for a somewhat concerning July report in The Athletic that the Tempo front office had been shopping their 2027 first-round pick at the deadline in search of a young post player.
They ultimately held off, which is good. However tempting the idea of a magic early playoff run might be for an expansion team, the Tempo are in no real position to be trading first-round picks right now. And without the pressure of Valk-sized expectations, it’s a pretty easy team to like in its own right. Count Rice among the new wave of exciting point guards whose size and athleticism has made her transition to the pros delightfully easy. "Unfortunately, we haven't been able to evaluate us at full strength, but you've been able to evaluate individual talent," Brondello said at the postgame presser on Wednesday. She patted Rice on the shoulder. "And this one, we know, is a franchise player."
In the leap she’s made from microwave-style secondary scorer to lead guard, Mabrey has built herself a decent case to win Most Improved Player. (OK, maybe it would be kind of funny for a max player to win Most Improved.) Only A'ja Wilson and Caitlin Clark have a higher usage rate, but Mabrey's been more efficient than ever this season, shining in a system less catered to post players than her previous stops in Chicago and Connecticut were. Her 53-point game back in June tied the WNBA's single-game scoring record and delighted her home crowd.
She still has some room for improvement. Despite the "crash out jar" she adopted at Unrivaled this offseason (curse words: $1, scuffles: $40), Mabrey is still on pace to be among the league leaders in technical fouls. But there are some promising signs in that department. On Tuesday against the Fever, she kept her mouth shut and walked away when Kelsey Mitchell got in her face during a little tussle away from the ball.
Mabrey also recently starred in something of a Canadian Heritage Minute after she tweeted about her Rogers WiFi not working. On Tuesday, when a reporter suggested that being fed up with the country’s telecom oligopoly made her a true Canadian, she did not seem comforted to know this. “I’m not. I don’t want to be part of it,” she said, half-serious. “I want my WiFi to work.” Sentimentality has its limits.