The Toronto Tempo got off to a strong start before injuries ate away at their WNBA expansion tour.
Beyond the WNBA's fateful eight lies a searching seven.
The FIBA World Cup break has paused the 2026 WNBA season, but the eight-team playoff field has been established with four games left on every group's docket. But the remaining seven are left to pick up the pieces for next season, forced to ponder their fates as they watch the league's 30th postseason from the sidelines.
With that in mind, Ballislife looks into the futures of these voyages of the damned and what kind of waters they'll traverse on the trip ahead. This series will be presented in the order of each team's elimination from playoff contention.
The attention heads up north in part three, which centers on the TORONTO TEMPO ...
Team: Toronto Tempo
Record: 11-29 (and counting)
Last Playoff Appearance: N/A
Date of Playoff Death: August 19
Brittney Sykes was on fire vs. the Sparks:
— espnW (@espnW) May 18, 2026
🔥 38 PTS (new career-high)
🔥 15-15 FT
🔥 3 STL pic.twitter.com/cpFRkrev2X
What Went Wrong
When the expansion draft was speedily staged after the successful collective bargaining negotiations, it was generally agreed that Toronto got the better end of the stick.
Funded and assembled by several prominent True North backers, the Tempo landed Connecticut sharpshooter Marina Mabrey and Finals heroine Nyara Sabally from New York in the expansion draft before getting Brittney Sykes on a max deal and choosing multi-pronged UCLA champion Kiki Rice fifth overall in the rookie selections. Picked to lead the operation was Sandy Brondello, Sabally's supervisor from the aforementioned metropolitan title run in 2024.
The Tempo put up a good early pace that hinted at a Golden State-style expansion playoff run: it won seven of its debut dozen, propelled by the collaborative backcourt efforts of Mabrey, Rice, and Sykes. Through June 10 play, Toronto was the third-best scoring team in the league and sat fifth in offensive rating after Sykes put up 38 in an overtime victory over the Connecticut Sun.
Injuries Throw the Tempo Off-Beat
The injury bug, alas, appeared to follow Brondello from New York: it began when Rice endured a June ankle sprain that essentially ended her Rookie of the Year campaign. Over the first 10 games with Rice, Toronto was fourth in the league in offensive rating. While Rice has returned, Toronto has ranked 12th in that department ever since her original ailment.
While sheer offensive insanity from Mabrey kept the Tempo in the headlines (her magnum opus being a WNBA record-tying 53-point effort in a June win over Los Angeles), persistent foot issues for Sykes essentially rendered her the team MVP for, literally, the most painful reasons. When she went down, the Tempo dropped 15 of 18 in a stretch that removed it from playoff consideration.
Defensive Struggles
Familiar injury woes for Sabally and fellow New York transplant Isabelle Harrison also ate away at progress and it showed in the post: Toronto continues to rank at or near the bottom of almost every traditional and advanced rebounding metric, which led it to take the relatively drastic measure of trading for rising Connecticut talent Aneesah Morrow. The sophomore quickly became the team's top woman on the boards upon her mid-summer arrival at the trade deadline, which saw Toronto pose as a buyer despite sitting in relatively dire straits on the WNBA leaderboard.
Of course, there were issues that also couldn't be buried by injuries: Toronto never found any sort of defensive rhythm no matter who was in the lineup, allowing at least 85 points in all but seven of its showings so far this season. That output included a stretch of four straight games with at least 100 tallies let up, the first of its kind in WNBA history. At the FIBA break, Toronto ranks last in points allowed, defensive rating, and offensive rebounds against.
Top Silver Lining
If anything, the Tempo seem well stocked in the backcourt thanks to the Mabrey-Sykes tandem and more.
Most expansion clubs are forced to make do with a hodgepodge of unproven talent after an expansion draft but Toronto struck relative gold with this pairing, especially with a backcourt whisperer like Brondello leading the charge.
The late development of Sykes is particularly intriguing: the world was already well-aware of what she could do defensively but the offensive showcase at age 32 (career-best 18.6 points) was a strong return for the Tempo's first major investment. Combine that with the early promise of Rice and Toronto seems like it can at least immediately keep pace in an increasingly offense-happy WNBA.
The rookie Tempo also poetically enjoyed the contributions of conventional and uncanny freshmen alike: Rice was making a case to be the league's most valuable rookie before she went down for the first time while both Maria Conde and Laura Juskaite have taken advantage of early thrusts into the spotlight: since July tipped off, Juskaite and Conde rank sixth and eighth in rookie scoring respectively and are among only six first-years pulling in at least four rebounds a game in the same span.
MARINA MABREY TONIGHT 🔥🔥🔥
— Women’s Hoops Network (@WomensHoops_USA) June 26, 2026
• 53 POINTS
• 6 REBOUNDS
• 9/18 3PM (!!!)
• 17/28 FG
• 32 MINUTES PLAYED (!!!) pic.twitter.com/GHVOjpvnX6
Looking Ahead
Unrestricted Free Agents: Temi Fagbenle, Isabelle Harrison, Kia Nurse
Restricted Free Agents: Nyara Sabally
Exclusive Rights Free Agents: Maria Conde, Laura Juskaite
Toronto is set up reasonably well for the future: Mabrey and Sykes (as well as fellow seasoned worker Julie Allemand) are secure through at least next season while the rookie class headlined by Rice should be fun for Brondello to work with after endless win-now tours in Phoenix and New York forced her to put her development cap in storage.
The late march of the damned currently also has Toronto placed second in the presumed JuJu Watkins sweepstakes. It's a good thing that Watkins has established herself as a player capable of doing pretty much anything, as the Tempo is in dire need of post help, evidenced by their attempt to pass as deadline buyers despite being well-removed from the playoff picture.
The good news about the relatively bizarre Morrow trade is that she is far from a half-season project, as the Tempo took advantage of a moving Connecticut group looking to add to its Houston fund. Her entry, however, has made it clear that she can't do it alone, and that's going to lead to questions about the fates of Harrison and Sabally. Both are capable of making contributions to contending programs but their respective injury issues will likely be at the forefront of any discussions about their futures.
Despite keeping a good bit of its backcourt core, Toronto does have wiggle room with the fourth-highest amount of cap space in 2027, which could help it keep things relatively familiar to the tune of re-upping with local heroine Nurse, an Ontario native signed after the expansion draft.
Is There Hope?
Maybe the basketball world was a little spoiled on expansion excitement thanks to the Valkyries and the Tempo was an unfortunate victim of that brand of hype. Having said that, there's still plenty of reason to believe that Ontario can capitalize on its early fanfare, thanks to a veteran core that's so rare to find on an expansion team's earliest ledgers.
Toronto does have to get tougher to adjust to the rigors of WNBA play and trading for Morrow is a good start. It's a move that could well come to define the Tempo's future fortunes in more ways than one: viewers from abroad may interpret the trade in dire straits as a sign that general manager Monica Wright Rogers and Co. are willing to take swings no matter the scenario, a reputation that began to be established once they set seven figures on Sykes.
But with the battle for the WNBA penthouse already cutthroat enough, the Portland Fire getting a good bit out of its relatively muted approach in year one, and more expansion teams on the way, it could get late early for the league's first international club. It'll be imperative to post results in year two, making this a vital offseason no matter how the lottery's ping-pong balls bounce.
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Geoff Magliocchetti is on X @GeoffJMags
