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<\/p>\nMonica Wright Rogers\u2019s face lights up.<\/p>\n
The Toronto Tempo general manager had just introduced Sandy Brondello as the team\u2019s inaugural head coach minutes earlier on Tuesday at a press conference in downtown Toronto, and she was already thinking about what that could mean for a roster that is currently blank.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to take advantage of the opportunity of this moment,\u201d Wright Rogers told CBC Sports. \u201cOur moment has to do with free agents and what better way to ensure we have the right free agents at the table than ensuring that we have a coach that they\u2019re all familiar with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, there is little questioning Brondello\u2019s accolades.<\/p>\n
The 57-year-old Australian was shockingly let go by the New York Liberty just one year after winning the title in October, but she\u2019s been in the WNBA for 27 years as a player, assistant coach and head coach.<\/p>\n
Brondello won WNBA championships with the 2014 Mercury and the 2024 Liberty. These days, she also doubles as head coach of her national team, and was even quick to remind the Canadian audience of her bronze-medal win over Canada at the 2022 World Cup.<\/p>\n
In the weeks since leaving the Liberty, players and coaches alike have lauded Brondello, who said she is looking forward to the challenge of building and leading an expansion team in Canada.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can build from the ground up and you can bring the players in that will represent this city and this team in the right way and enable us to be the best, the highest-performing team that we can,\u201d Brondello said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe goal is to bring a championship to Toronto. That hasn’t changed. My narrative hasn’t changed. I like winning.\u201d<\/p>\n
WATCH | Brondello introduced as Tempo head coach:<\/p>\n
2-time WNBA champion Sandy Brondello introduced as Toronto Tempo’s inaugural coach<\/p>\n
Toronto Tempo general manager Monica Wright Rogers met the media on Tuesday, to introduce two-time WNBA champion coach Sandy Brondello as the expansion team’s coach.Compete and win<\/p>\n
And so by hiring Brondello, the Tempo made it clear: the goal isn\u2019t just to cement a solid foundation and bring professional women\u2019s basketball to Toronto. It\u2019s to compete and to win.<\/p>\n
But the Tempo are entering the WNBA at an interesting time \u2014 the confluence of a U.S. media deal worth $200 million US annually beginning next season and the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement led players to line up their contracts to end this off-season, expecting salaries to soar.<\/p>\n
Nearly every veteran player will be available to teams in free agency.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the moment Wright Rogers is hoping to use to her team\u2019s advantage, perhaps buoyed by the expansion Golden State Valkyries surprising playoff appearance in their recently completed inaugural season.<\/p>\n
Brondello, whose experience and reputation as a player\u2019s coach, is an easy selling point.<\/p>\n
Yet Brondello said the players that will ultimately set the tone for the Tempo in Year 1.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a vision of what our identity should look like, but when we have players, which we don’t have at the moment, we want to have a culture that’s the player’s culture,\u201d Brondello said. \u201cWhat kind of legacy do they want to leave behind?\u201d<\/p>\n
The philosophy will extend on the court, too. Brondello didn\u2019t tip her hand as to what exact style she\u2019ll employ, instead waiting to see what the roster ultimately looks like.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone talks about pace and space and all that kind of stuff. In the end, we don’t have players yet, but I want to put the players in the best spot so that they can have success,\u201d Brondello said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo there’s no set style of how we want to play.\u00a0 We want to play entertaining basketball. We want to play great team basketball and be tough.\u00a0 But we also have to be adaptable for the moment.<\/p>\n
![\"Australian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1762298232_491_default.jpg\")
Brondello, pictured after the New York Liberty won the WNBA title on Oct. 20, 2024, also led the Phoenix Mercury to a championship in 2014. ( Elsa\/Getty Images)\u2018Great city for a sports team\u2019<\/p>\n
Wright Rogers continued that pitch by vouching for the city she\u2019d rarely visited before being named GM in February.<\/p>\n
\u201cToronto as a city is a great city for a sports team. And I think for players that have been here, they speak volumes to how the city embraces them,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd again, just with our strategy around building the staff, that No. 1 are great people, but that our players know care about their careers and their longevity, care about the quality of care for them and their families. All those things are part of the vision and the culture that we’re trying to build here with the Tempo.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, the flip side of this moment for the Tempo is immense uncertainty \u2014 the league and players recently agreed to extend their CBA negotiation window until Nov. 30, but prior public discourse has been contentious.<\/p>\n
The organization still doesn\u2019t know when the expansion draft will take place or what it will look like, president Teresa Resch told CBC Sports.<\/p>\n
The expected start of free agency is in limbo. Prior to last season, players were allowed to officially sign as of Feb. 1.<\/p>\n
For now, though, it\u2019s business as usual.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe look forward to getting clear direction on the future of the league and we\u2019ll plan accordingly, but there\u2019s a lot of things that we know will happen and we can plan for and have discussions. The ball is still gonna bounce in the same direction and the strategy on the basketball court doesn\u2019t change,\u201d Resch said.<\/p>\n
However it plays out, Brondello will bring decades of know-how to a team whose moniker isn\u2019t even one-year-old. Her presence \u2014 on and off the court\u2014 signals a desire to win immediately.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s gonna compete. She\u2019s gonna want to win,\u201d Wright Rogers said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s just who I am as well. I would never get into a situation or step onto a court if I didn\u2019t want to win and so just knowing that\u2019s in her as well as me, it solves a lot of problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brondello, whose place is WNBA lore is already secure, said her ultimate goal in Toronto is to build a world-class franchise and \u201chopefully bring championships.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that’s the legacy. \u2026 I’ve won two. It’d be great to win the third one with three different organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Monica Wright Rogers\u2019s face lights up. The Toronto Tempo general manager had just introduced Sandy Brondello as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262087,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-262086","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}