The WNBA expanded this season, adding the Portland Fire and Toronto Tempo.<\/p>\n
The Tempo play their first preseason game today against the Connecticut Sun.<\/p>\n
The Fire will play their first preseason game as well, taking on the Seattle Storm.<\/p>\n
The WNBA now has 15 teams, with the newest franchises in Toronto and Portland joining the mix this summer. They hold their very first games in the preseason today, hoping to build chemistry and momentum ahead of the season.<\/p>\n
Toronto Tempo vs Connecticut Sun<\/p>\n
The Tempo took on a win-now approach to their inaugural season, hiring championship-winning coach Sandy Brondello to immediately establish a winning culture. They followed that up with an expansion draft that focused heavily on established veteran talents such as Marina Mabrey and Brittney Sykes. This sets Toronto up well, and although Sykes and a few other key players will miss this game, they should have the edge over the rebuilding Sun.<\/p>\n
Portland Fire vs Seattle Storm<\/p>\n
Portland took on a different approach than Toronto, staffing both their coaches and roster with high-upside, but unproven younger talent. It sets them up for long-term success, but no one should be surprised if the Fire win fewer games than the Tempo this season. Still, last season\u2019s Valkyries performed much better than expected, and Fire GM Vanja \u010cernivec was a part of that. In this first preseason game, expect the Fire to be competitive but lose a close one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The WNBA expanded this season, adding the Portland Fire and Toronto Tempo. The Tempo play their first preseason…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-638214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638214","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=638214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}