TORONTO — “I remember this game like it happened yesterday,” Laura Juskaite said during her exit interview.
The Lithuanian rookie had just been asked about the most defining moments of the Toronto Tempo’s inaugural season, and as she thought about Marina Mabrey’s 53-point game she broke into a beaming smile.
“She was doing incredible things,” Juskaite recounted.
The record-typing performance inside of Toronto’s rickety Coca-Cola Coliseum was an undeniable highlight of the first season. It was certainly a career highlight for the star shooting guard who had previously been overlooked, but it meant more than that to the fresh Tempo roster. It was emblematic of the success possible even on a WNBA team north of the border — it helped put Toronto on the women’s basketball map. Although injuries bit into the overall success the expansion franchise found, that moment of greatness still carries weight.
“We could not believe what we were watching,” Isabelle Harrison told the IX Sports when she, too, brought up the 125-point win over the Sparks as a defining moment.
According to the eight-year veteran, planning for the big night on June 25 began three days earlier in Atlanta. Harrison remembers sitting on the bench during that game and watching her squad struggle against the Dream. There, they began plotting how to turn things around.
When they returned to Toronto, change started to happen. Harrison explains how it felt seeing Mabrey knock down nine threes and watching Julie Allemand rack up a career-high 14 assists as the two got the score moving.
“It just felt like oh yeah we’re taking off, and it was such great momentum.”
Of course, Mabrey agreed, “I think the 53 tops everything. That was one of the best nights of my basketball career.”
The Tempo’s inaugural season was littered with record moments of greatness and first-time accolades, but is more easily defined by the injuries that racked up and derailed Sandy Brondello’s optimistic plans for year one.
“[Our team was defined by] going through adversity and still showing up every day,” Julie Allemand said. “No matter what happened, like the injuries. Every time we had someone else, so like it was crazy. Like when you think about it, like when you take some time to think about it, it’s insane.”
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The adversity Toronto faced defined the year. No press conference or media availability was spared from the injury conversation and discussions of the impact of losing numerous players. The Tempo ended up losing 120 player games to illness and injury. They ranked third in the league in missed games.
“I think the injuries were toughest parts. I think what’s been really tough for us is that I don’t even know if we had one game with the full roster. No, like this is unbelievable. So imagine if like we could have the full roster. I think it would have been so different. So, it’s sad,” Allemand reflected.
Rookie Maria Conde only missed nine games this season. On a roster this impacted, that marked a special level of consistency. As a result, the young guard stepped into new roles within the team, and for her, that response to adversity became defining.
“I could adapt really fast to whatever the team needed,” she said. “This was a new league for me, a new team, obviously for everyone, but for me, it was coming into something that I didn’t know […] I’ve had to be in different positions, playing different roles, trying to guard different people that I also didn’t know.”
Fellow rookie Kiki Rice wasn’t one of the lucky ones consistently available for games. Her adversity came as an ankle injury one month into the season. The young star defines her season by her response to setbacks.
“I think that kind of taught me a lot about myself, and you know just you know wanting, obviously to be healthy, but also about just the ability to work through hard things, even in a completely new environment,” Rice said.
Even with disappointment from uncontrolables, Nyara Sabally believes the season is best understood through what it revealed about the talents in Toronto.
“The potential here is endless,” she said. “I feel like there’s a good thing going on. It just needs a little more time.”
Teonni Key saw that potential in Vancouver during the Tempo’s last game of their cross-Canada series. It had been 12 games since a win and yet, the team was still fighting hard.
“I think our mindset never shifted to thinking we were not a good team,” she said. “[We were] still fighting and playing for each other.”
The 82-79 win over the Portland Fire on Aug. 23 marked the Tempo’s final victory of their inaugural season and the last time the players would walk into the post-game presser with smiles on their faces.
Still, Brittney Sykes saw moments of joy throughout the remaining stretch of losses. For her, the Tempo are defined by how they came together after a 32-point loss in Phoenix right before the FIBA break. She says that locker room was filled with encouragement and collective buy-in. Sykes saw teammates pouring into each other and hyping each other up. As she reflected after the season, the veteran decided that even with a losing record, she was proud of this group.
To look back on the year and not acknowledge how the fans embraced the WNBA would be remiss. Canadian Kia Nurse is most proud of how an entire country welcomed the Tempo.
“I think just the outpouring of love and support that existed for this franchise across the country,” Nurse said in describing why the inaugural season was a special one. “Whenever a new franchise kind of comes into play, there’s always that belief and that thought process of like, this is possible and this is going to happen.
“But when you finally get here and you’re actually in the arena,” she continued, “Whether you’re in Coca-Cola, Scotiabank, Vancouver, Montreal, and you’re seeing all the fans, and you’re seeing the excitement around it, I’m so proud of the way that Canada truly embraced this team.”
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