{"id":657561,"date":"2026-05-09T05:42:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T05:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/657561\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T05:42:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T05:42:15","slug":"torontos-first-wnba-game-is-no-thing-of-beauty-but-sellout-crowd-finds-plenty-to-cheer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/657561\/","title":{"rendered":"Toronto’s first WNBA game is no thing of beauty, but sellout crowd finds plenty to cheer"},"content":{"rendered":"

TORONTO (AP) \u2014 The Toronto Tempo didn\u2019t treat fans to beautiful basketball in their inaugural game, but they managed to keep it close all the way to the final buzzer.<\/p>\n

Shakira Austin made four free throws down the stretch and the Washington Mystics held on to beat the Tempo 68-65<\/a> on Friday night, disappointing a sellout crowd of 8,210 at Coca-Cola Coliseum.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt was a great moment,\u201d Tempo coach Sandy Brondello said. \u201cSad that we didn\u2019t win the game, didn\u2019t close it out, but the fans were fantastic. It was a very ugly game. Hopefully they get way prettier than that as we move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Tempo shot 5 for 25 from long range and finished with 10 assists on 17 baskets.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were poor on offense,\u201d Brondello said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t share the ball, we didn\u2019t play as a team as much as we would have liked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brittney Sykes scored the first points in Tempo history on a pull-up jumper in the first quarter but went 0 for 5 from distance, missing a 3 with 14 seconds left that would have given Toronto the lead.<\/p>\n

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One of the loudest cheers came when Canadian soccer star Christine Sinclair was shown on the video screen.<\/p>\n

Almost as loud was the reaction when Marina Mabrey\u2019s 3-pointer with 4:19 remaining in the fourth put Toronto up 57-56, its first lead of the second half.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo have them have our back, cheering for us every time we figure it out, it kind of helps us feel like we\u2019re getting something going,” Mabrey said.<\/p>\n

The Tempo finished with 16 turnovers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve just got to execute a little bit better with how we want to play,\u201d Brondello said.<\/p>\n

The Tempo get another chance at their first win when they host the Seattle Storm on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP WNBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/wnba-basketball<\/a><\/p>\n

Ian Harrison, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO (AP) \u2014 The Toronto Tempo didn\u2019t treat fans to beautiful basketball in their inaugural game, but they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[6738,49,48,243387,13054,23760,1611,12197,3302,45963,737],"class_list":["post-657561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-brittney-sykes","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-inaugural-game","tag-marina-mabrey","tag-sandy-brondello","tag-seattle-storm","tag-shakira-austin","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-tempo","tag-washington-mystics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657561","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=657561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}