The Toronto Tempo have their first player.<\/p>\n
Julie Allemand was selected with their first pick \u2014 second overall \u2014 in Friday\u2019s WNBA expansion draft.<\/p>\n
The Portland Fire chose Canada\u2019s Bridget Carleton with the first pick.<\/p>\n
Portland owned the first pick after Toronto won a coin toss and opted to take the sixth overall pick in the college draft, pushing the Fire to seventh.<\/p>\n
In all, the Tempo used 11 of 12 choices available.<\/p>\n
After Allemand, taken from the Los Angeles Sparks, the team\u2019s remaining first-rounders included Nyara Sabally (New York Liberty), Marina Mabrey (Connecticut Sun), Aaliyah Nye (Las Vegas Aces), Lexi Held (Phoenix Mercury) and Maria Conde (Golden State Valkyries).<\/p>\n
In the second round, the Tempo selected Maria Kliundikova (Minnesota Lynx), Adja Kane (Liberty), Nikolina Milic (Sun), Kitija Laksa (Mercury) and Kristy Wallace (Indiana Fever).<\/p>\n
\u201cToday is an important step in building the foundation of the Toronto Tempo,\u201d general manager Monica Wright Rogers said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur goal was to construct a roster that reflects the style of play and culture we want to establish \u2014 one that balances competitiveness with long-term flexibility, and features players who bring versatility, toughness and winning experience. This group gives us the ability to compete from Day 1 while continuing to build, and embraces the opportunity to help shape something new in a new country as Canada\u2019s first WNBA team.\u201d<\/p>\n
The group of 11 includes two former champions in Sabally and Nye and represents eight different countries, including the U.S., Spain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Australia, Belgium, Germany, Russia, France and Latvia.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, Toronto agreed not to take anyone from the Chicago Sky in exchange for the 26th pick in the college draft, which will take place April 13.<\/p>\n
The Tempo tip off their inaugural season on May 8 at home against the Washington Mystics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Toronto Tempo have their first player. Julie Allemand was selected with their first pick \u2014 second overall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-581317","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581317","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=581317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}