Toronto Tempo guard Kia Nurse, one of the WNBA’s top Canadian players, speaks to the Coca-Cola Coliseum crowd before the first game in team history.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
A sellout crowd showed up Friday night in Toronto to witness a watershed moment for women’s professional sports in Canada – the inaugural game for the country’s first WNBA expansion team.
The 8,000-seat Coca-Cola Coliseum was awash in white as every fan was gifted a white souvenir Toronto Tempo opening-night T-shirt.
Team owners Larry and Judy Tanenbaum sat courtside, both decked out in Tempo leather jackets. There were plenty of dignitaries in the house, from WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert to Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow.
A poet laureate opened the night with verse. The team’s sole Canadian, Kia Nurse, took the mic to welcome the crowd, challenging them to make Toronto the loudest venue in the league, to prove why Canada has long deserved a WNBA club.
What’s it like to be with a team in a new place, not knowing how it will be embraced, not knowing what the future holds? Toronto’s new head coach, Sandy Brondello, didn’t hesitate when asked that before the game.
“I think the future is bright. I already know what it is,” said Brondello, who is embarking on her 27th WNBA season, adding together her years as a player and coach.
“If you see the evolution of the WNBA over the last 30 years, it’s quite remarkable. … The players are getting paid the right way, and the amount of people that love watching the WNBA. It is a real movement. Sponsors, everyone’s getting behind us. … It may be even bigger in Canada, because we are Canada’s team.”
Brondello chose a starting lineup of veteran WNBA talent to usher in the new club as it tipped off against the Washington Mystics – Julie Allemand, Marina Mabrey, Brittney Sykes, Nyara Sabally and Temi Fagbenle.
It was Sykes, better known simply as “Slim,” who dropped the first bucket in Tempo regular-season history – a 16-foot pull-up jumper. The crowd boomed.
Brittney Sykes drives to the hoop on Friday in the Tempo’s debut game. She scored the first points in franchise history.Michael Chisholm/Getty Images
Canada’s “First Lady of Basketball,” Sylvia Sweeney, attended Friday’s game 50 years after she captained Canada in the Olympic debut of women’s basketball in Montreal, another massive moment for the female game.
“It was really the time and the ability to bring women from the college level into a consciousness that they deserved more,” said Sweeney of that era for women’s hoops. “With that consciousness, you get a groundswell of ‘why nots?’”
Sweeney was among a group of Canadian female basketball trailblazers from across the eras whom CIBC brought to Friday’s game to honour their contributions to women’s hoops in this country. A group took the floor in the first quarter to a standing ovation from the crowd.
Sweeney had been part of the group that helped bring the NBA’s Toronto Raptors to the city in 1995. She’d been approached in the past to help get a WNBA team, but the time wasn’t right. She believes now that the present is the right time.
“[Tempo president] Teresa Resch, Larry Tanenbaum, they’ve got the acumen, and the business savvy, the vision,” said Sweeney, a Canadian Basketball Hall of Famer. “I’m proud of them. I’m proud that they’ve had the temerity to write the cheque.”
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She hoped the team thinks about the legacy it leaves. It echoes something Nurse said repeatedly during training camp.
The Hamilton, Ont., native reminded everyone that Canada’s Olympic team on the men’s side is made up entirely of NBA players, but the women’s team consists of just a few WNBA players at this point, and they’re all kids who idolized Vince Carter and the Raptors growing up. She said a new era for the women’s game is about to take shape.
“In 10 to 15 years, you’re going to see all these young women on the national team, and when you have a conversation with them about where their love for basketball came from, they’ll be Tempo kids.”
Toronto’s second game will be Wednesday, at home again, against the Seattle Storm.
The Tempo and Mystics tip off at Coca-Cola Coliseum on Friday, initiating a new era for Canadian women’s sports.Chris Young/The Canadian Press