It is 9:42 AM and Marina Mabrey is yelling at Kiki Rice.
Not mean yelling. Coach yelling. The kind a point guard does when the rookie cuts to the wrong spot on a baseline drive and Mabrey has to abandon the play. Rice resets. Mabrey explains. They run it again. This time Rice cuts to the corner instead of the wing. Mabrey kicks the ball out. Rice catches and shoots. Swish.
This is day six of Toronto Tempo training camp. The gym at Coca-Cola Coliseum smells like the same fresh paint it smelled like on day one. The folding chairs for media are still six. The Tempo are still nineteen players for twelve roster spots. Brondello has another week to figure out who stays.
I have been at every practice. Here is what one week told me.
Marina Mabrey looks like the franchise player they paid for. She is running the offense at a tempo that matches her name. The pick-and-roll reads with Kliundikova are already crisp. Mabrey is also coaching constantly. She has been in this league for eight years. She has played in three different systems. She knows which cuts work and which ones get the ball stolen, and she is teaching that to anyone within earshot. Rice is the one who hears it most. That is going to matter in November when the rookie wall hits and Mabrey has to keep her steady.
Brittney Sykes is the defender the front office said she was. There is a moment in the second scrimmage on Wednesday where Allemand tries to run a pick-and-roll on Sykes and Sykes just refuses to die on the screen. She fights through, recovers, contests the shot, gets the rebound. The whole thing took 4.2 seconds. Brondello clapped from the sideline. So did the assistant coaches. Sykes did not react. She just jogged back up the floor. That is who she is.
Maria Kliundikova is the Tempo's most underrated player. Everyone talks about Mabrey because she is the franchise tag. Everyone talks about Sykes because she is the splashy free agent signing. Nobody outside the building talks about Kliundikova, and the people inside the building think she is going to win All-Rookie. The Russian center is 6-foot-7, plays bigger than that, and has the kind of soft hands that turn entry passes into easy buckets. She also runs the floor better than any center I have watched in person this year. Brondello has run a lot of secondary break sets through her in the first week. They work.
Kiki Rice is a draft pick learning a system. That is not a bad thing. She is making the right reads about 70 percent of the time, which is exactly where you want a rookie point guard at day six. The other 30 percent is her trying to do too much. Brondello is patient with her in a way that suggests the front office sees Rice as the long-term backcourt partner for Mabrey, not the next-Sykes off the bench. The minutes will come. They will not all come in May.
Kia Nurse is the moment everyone in the gym waits for. Practice ends with five-on-five live action and Brondello has been running the second unit through Nurse. She had a sequence on Thursday where she hit a corner three, came off a flare screen for another three, and then pump-faked her way into the lane for a layup. The Tempo staff cheered. The other players cheered. Nurse looked annoyed that anyone made a thing out of it. She has played 113 games in this league. She does not need a moment. She is here to win.
Temi Fagbenle is the conditioning question. She arrived from a European league where the games are slower and the recovery between possessions is longer. She is gassed by minute eight of every scrimmage. That is not a knock. That is what happens to a player who is adapting to WNBA pace. Brondello has been working her in shorter bursts and it is helping. By opening night, Fagbenle should be able to give the second unit fifteen productive minutes. That is what she signed for.
The role players are the story nobody is writing yet. Julie Allemand is the savviest backup point guard in this league and she does not get talked about because she does not score. She had nine assists in the first scrimmage and zero turnovers. Isabelle Harrison is throwing her body around in a way that makes every drill harder for the rookies. Aerial Powers is shooting the lights out in shooting drills, which means she is making a real run at the final roster spot. Three or four of these veterans will not make the team. Some of them deserve to.
The young players are the harder calls. Dara Mabrey is here on a training camp deal and she is making shots. That is going to make the cut conversation between Brondello and the front office uncomfortable. Carla Leite, the French wing the Tempo took late in the second round, has been the best perimeter defender in the secondary scrimmages. She might make the roster. Lexi Held is competing hard against Rice for backup point guard reps and might end up in a different role entirely.
The defensive identity is real. Brondello told the team on day one that they were going to be a defensive team first. That is what they have practiced. The rotations are tight. The communication is improving. There is a long way to go, but the foundation is there. Expansion teams usually take six weeks to look like a defense. The Tempo took four days.
The first preseason game is Thursday in Indianapolis against the Fever. That is the first time we will see this team play someone who is not wearing the same jersey. Mabrey will get 18 minutes. Sykes will get 22. Kliundikova will start. Rice will play the entire fourth quarter. That is the rotation Brondello wants to test before opening night.
Eleven days until May 8. Washington Mystics in Toronto. Coca-Cola Coliseum sold out in 90 minutes when tickets went live. The first WNBA game on Canadian soil starts a clock that does not stop until the Tempo's last home game in September. I have waited a long time to write that sentence. So have a lot of people.
The Tempo Report newsletter goes weekly starting next Monday. I will be at every home game and most of the road games. Bring your questions. We have a lot of basketball to watch.
[ End Report ]
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