It was deafening in Scotiabank Arena as the Toronto Tempo’s largest home crowd welcomed Brittney Sykes home after an eight-week hiatus.
“Chills,” Sykes said.
“I said from the beginning, like yes, the W fans, in the States, they give love, but goddamnit, like Toronto and Canada itself, the love that they give is just ridiculous,” Sykes said. “I’m really grateful for that too.”
The Tempo’s star guard and defensive catalyst left the last game they played against the Indiana Fever on June 16 with a left plantar fascia injury. On Tuesday, after 18 games away, Sykes made her return against the very same team in Toronto’s biggest basketball venue.
Sykes had been teasing her return on social media for a few weeks, and by the time head coach Sandy Brondello finally confirmed her availability the anticipation had peaked. With so much energy and excitement around the star, emotion and the return can become muddled.
Ahead of the game, Brondello said all she wanted was for Sykes to play with joy.
“She’s a part of the identity and how we can be our best at both ends of the floor. I told her just go out, play, have some grace, and play with joy,” Brondello said.
After the game, Sykes shared just how much she needed the advice.
“I’m grateful for coach really because that helped me kind of ease my nerves,” she said.
“I can get really worked up and lost in a lot of things that I can’t control, and the one thing that I could control was where I placed my joy. So just to be grateful, I think in life, period, when you lead with gratitude, it’s not much that you can get distracted about.”
Sykes lit up the scoreboard in her return with 15 points — and the Tempo needed that boost. The hosts missed their first nine shots and didn’t get on the board until Sykes drew a foul and got to the line. Sykes has been specifically focused on her free-throw percentage all season so it was only fitting that she would kick off her game back with two singles.
From there, she recalls haggling for extra minutes. Sykes was supposed to be on a minutes restriction, but she fought for as much time on the court as her coaching team would allow. Exactly 21 minutes proved to be that number.
“I would love to have played her more,” Brondello quipped.
Her teammates sure appreciated the extra help.
“A lot of good things she can give us on the court and off the court with her leadership. So it’s been a while. Maybe we will need some time to adjust again how to play with her and find the connection again. But it’s great for us,” teammate Laura Juskaite said of Sykes’ return.
Sykes has been waiting for a while to get back on the court. And over the two months away, she’s missed some great opportunities. At the time of her injury she was one of the league’s top scorers and had recorded two 38-point games. She was on track to be considered for all-star when she suffered her non-contact off-ball injury.
“It’s been a testing eight weeks, but you know, it taught me a lot about myself. I got to show up with my teammates and the organization in a different way.”
“I got to pull off some nice fits,” she joked. “It was hard for me too, you know… But you know, I just stay with my faith. What’s delayed isn’t denied.”
Through this time she watched her Tempo other half — Marina Mabrey — head to her first all-star game in Toronto, something they had thought they might get to accomplish together.
“I was still really happy for my teammate. You know, I kept telling her like, there’s nothing like it for her. She felt bad for me, but I was like, bro, focus on the fact that like you are finally where you should have been, you know. The Tempo gave us an opportunity, and Marina took full advantage of it.”
Sykes focused on her mental game when she couldn’t be there on the court. She says she learned a lot about herself over those weeks and got quite a few therapy sessions in. This injury was unique because it wasn’t as clear as a break or sprain can typically be. With the injury in this case being caused by a connective tissue, it had a larger chance of ambiguity with the recovery.
“I’ve been hurt before, but it seems like this injury was way harder to deal with than something that was indeed like, you’re out, you know, kind of thing,” Sykes said.
As one of the Tempo’s key veteran leaders, Sykes focused on staying present with the team from the sidelines. At times, she struggled to find a balance between constructive criticism and encouragement. The Tempo have lost 12 straight games, 10 of which came before Sykes’ return. Although the team is working building for the future as an expansion team, this many losses still have an impact.
“If you know we give in to our circumstances, then we could just toss the whole season kind of situation. There was a couple games where I saw that they needed my encouragement and … then they needed somebody to be on top of them, so I actually learned how to balance the two,” Sykes said.
Sykes’ goal for the rest of the year is to play more than 18 games. That’s the number of games she hit in 2024, the last time she was plagued with injury. She is currently two games away from that total.
And she will look to start adding to that ideal total this weekend with the Tempo’s final two cross-Canada games in Vancouver. She was scratched from Wednesday’s game against the Washington Mystics for injury management reasons.
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