The Toronto Tempo are trying to win now in their inaugural year, and many people are doubting them and\/or suggesting they should have done what most expansion teams do, which is build with youth.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll see just how far the Tempo can go with the roster they\u2019ve constructed, the highlight of which is two players who like to score the basketball a lot and who have been paid over $1 million to do so in Brittney Sykes and Marina Mabrey.<\/p>\n
Brittney Sykes and Marina Mabrey are a legit Big 2 for the Tempo<\/p>\n
The Tempo have a legit Big 2. Sykes and Mabrey aren\u2019t superstars, but they are certainly stars with the ability to help this team win some games right now.<\/p>\n
Sykes is No. 28 on ESPN\u2019s Top 50 WNBA players list<\/a>; Mabrey is No. 31. Compare that with the other 2026 expansion team, the Portland Fire, who have no representatives on the Top 50.<\/p>\n Sykes notably went all the way to the national championship game with Syracuse in 2016, but was actually the third-leading scorer on that team with 10.3 points per game and no consistent 3-point shot to speak of. It wasn\u2019t until the next year that she made 57 triples at 39.3 percent and recalled her 2014 high-scoring ways with 19.2 points a contest.<\/p>\n She was drafted No. 7 overall in the 2017 draft. The 3-point shooting has come and gone at the pro level, but was really good in 2026 at Unrivaled (2.1 makes per game at 40 percent). She\u2019s always prided herself on her defense and has been chasing Defensive Player of the Year. In just her second WNBA season, she finished sixth in the voting for that award; she went on to finish second in 2021 and third in 2023, with All-Defensive First Team honors coming those years and Second Team honors coming in 2020 and 2022.<\/p>\n When not hitting 3s, she can score in other ways. Her career-best scoring average is 15.9 points per game, which came in 2023, her first season with the Washington Mystics. She is as quick and physical a driver as they come, and is gonna get herself to the free throw line if she doesn\u2019t make the layup.<\/p>\n Mabrey wasn\u2019t a high draft pick like Sykes, but quickly changed her WNBA fortunes for the better with her work ethic. She added scoring punch off the bench for the Dallas Wings before we were allowed to call her a true star, and even now she remains somewhat underrated. Her 27 percent shooting from 3 last year doesn\u2019t help her cause when it comes to that, but she has an energy and a mystique about her<\/a> that suggests she can put a city (and in this case, a whole country) on her back.<\/p>\n Her career high in scoring of 15 points per game also came in 2023, her lone full season as a member of the Chicago Sky.<\/p>\n So with two players who have proven capable of scoring 15.9 and 15 points per game, Toronto seems willing to give Sykes and Mabrey full control of the offense and empower them to reach or surpass those numbers this year.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not just about Mabrey and Sykes for this team. The Tempo have a roster full of players who have potential.<\/p>\n Toronto\u2019s top pick in the expansion draft, Julie Allemand, has shown flashes in the past<\/p>\n Julie Allemand is probably the most interesting player on the Tempo\u2019s roster and could be the X factor that determines how much success the team has.<\/p>\n We have to be very aware of her Wubble season, so as to not underestimate her and Toronto\u2019s decision to take her with their first pick in the expansion draft. She was a 23-year-old rookie in 2020 and shot 47.8 percent from 3, which was good for No. 2 in the league with 44 makes, which averaged out to two per game in the shortened season. She was a great distributor too with 5.8 dimes per contest, which was also second in the league in 2020, to go along with her 8.5 points.<\/p>\n