Kia Nurse caught the ball above the break, took one dribble to her right, and let it go. The shot hit nothing but net. The clock said 7:59 of the first quarter. The board said Toronto 3, Connecticut 2. The crowd inside Coca-Cola Coliseum stood up and stayed standing for almost a minute.
That is the first basket in the history of the Toronto Tempo. The first basket in the history of WNBA basketball played on Canadian soil that counts toward anything. It will not show up in a standings column because preseason games do not. It is going on a wall in the franchise's offices anyway. Nurse is from Hamilton. She made the shot. The crowd lost its mind. Sometimes a moment is just a moment.
The Tempo lost the game 83-78 to the Connecticut Sun.
That is the second sentence in the recap, and it is the part that actually does not matter. Marina Mabrey did not play. Brittney Sykes did not play. Julie Allemand did not play. Three of the five players the Tempo are paying real money to be on the floor on May 8 sat in street clothes on the bench because Sandy Brondello does not need to win a preseason game to learn anything about Mabrey, Sykes, or Allemand. He needs them healthy. They are sitting because they are healthy enough to play and not so healthy that the staff is going to risk a tweak in a game that does not count.
What Brondello did need was reps for the players he is still figuring out. He got them.
Lexi Held got 30-plus minutes at the point and finished with 21 points. The same Lexi Held I wrote about three weeks ago when she was supposed to lose the backup point guard battle to Kiki Rice. Rice played, hit her first WNBA basket on a three in the second quarter, and looked like a rookie still learning the spacing of the pro game. Held looked like a player who has waited through eight years of WNBA training camp deals to get a moment like this and was not going to waste it. The minutes battle behind Mabrey just got more interesting.
Maria Kliundikova was not on the floor and will not be on it all season. The Russian center who Toronto drafted in the second round of the expansion draft is staying overseas with UMMC Yekaterinburg. The Tempo extended a reserved qualifying offer and retain her rights, but the frontcourt minutes everyone in this building thought she was going to absorb went to Temi Fagbenle, Isabelle Harrison, and Nyara Sabally instead. None of them held up the way Kliundikova would have. Aneesah Morrow finished with 21 points off the Connecticut bench, including the pull-up three in the final two minutes that turned a four-point lead into a possession that did not feel close.
Aaliyah Edwards added 14 points for the Sun. She is from Kingston, Ontario. The crowd cheered when her name was announced and cheered again when she scored. There is something about Canadian basketball fans that does not care which jersey is on the player as long as the player is one of ours. That is a sentence I have written before about Toronto Raptors crowds. It applies here too.
The third quarter is what worried me. The Tempo led by 13. They were running. Held was creating. Coca-Cola Coliseum sounded like a building that had been waiting for this since the announcement and was getting all of it back in one night. Then Connecticut started running the floor in transition, started getting second-chance points the Tempo could not box out, and closed the game on a 17-7 run that exposed exactly what the front office still has to solve. With Kliundikova staying overseas, Fagbenle is the de facto starting five. She will need help. The Tempo got outrebounded 35-21 and gave up 44 paint points. Those numbers do not survive a regular season schedule.
Brittney Griner played 14 minutes for the Sun and looked like a 35-year-old who has been playing in this league since 2013. She was efficient, low-key, in the right spot on every defensive rotation. She also did not fully impose herself, which is fine because it is preseason. Watch her in May.
Here is what the night actually told me. The Tempo are a real team. They have a starting five that, when healthy, will be competitive most nights. They do not have a true frontcourt anchor now that Kliundikova is staying overseas, which means Fagbenle and Harrison are going to have to absorb 50 minutes a game between them. They have a bench point guard battle that will not be settled until the regular season starts. They have a Canadian connection in Nurse and a backup wing situation that includes Maria Conde and Teonni Key, both of whom showed flashes against Connecticut.
What they do not have yet is the chemistry that comes from playing 30 games together. That part you cannot rush. The 17-7 run Connecticut closed the game on was the kind of stretch a veteran team avoids and a brand-new team has to learn its way out of. Toronto will learn it. They have eleven days.
The other thing the night told me is that this building is going to be loud. Coca-Cola Coliseum holds 7,854 people and on Wednesday it sounded bigger than the Air Canada Centre on a Raptors playoff night. That is what happens when a city has been waiting 27 years for a WNBA franchise and finally has one playing in front of them. The decibel level does not show up in a box score. It is going to be the thing visiting teams talk about all season.
Mabrey was on the bench, in a black warmup, watching every possession. She was not coaching. She was studying. She has played for three different franchises and she knows what the first time on a new floor looks like. Sykes sat next to her. Both of them stayed for the entire game. They did not leave after halftime the way some injured players do. They were there for it.
Opening night is Friday, May 8. Washington Mystics at Coca-Cola Coliseum, 7:30 PM. Sykes is healthy. Allemand is healthy. Mabrey is the question mark — she missed both preseason games with a back injury and is listed as day-to-day. Lauren Betts and Shakira Austin will be in the visiting frontcourt, and the Tempo are going to have to figure out how to defend the biggest frontcourt in the league with a Fagbenle-Harrison rotation that has not been tested against anything that physical yet.
That is a real game. This was a moment.
You do not always get to be in the building the first time something happens. I was in the building. I am going to remember Nurse's shot for a long time. I am going to remember the sound the crowd made even longer.
The Tempo Report newsletter goes weekly starting next Monday. The first regular issue lands the morning of opening night. Bring your questions. We have a season to cover.
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