{"id":464662,"date":"2026-02-12T18:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T18:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/464662\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T18:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T18:23:08","slug":"toronto-tempo-seeking-to-ignite-womens-basketball-pipeline-in-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/464662\/","title":{"rendered":"Toronto Tempo seeking to ignite women\u2019s basketball pipeline in Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-franchises \">The Toronto Tempo, one of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2025\/10\/21\/toronto-tempo-portland-fire-wait-in-limbo-as-wnba-cba-talks-continue\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2025\/10\/21\/toronto-tempo-portland-fire-wait-in-limbo-as-wnba-cba-talks-continue\/\">WNBA\u2019s expansion teams set to debut in 2026<\/a>, \u201cwant to represent all of Canada from the start\u201d by playing games across the country, which could \u201csupercharge the development of women\u2019s basketball\u201d in the nation, according to Kevin Pelton of ESPN.com. The Tempo will be playing a pair of regular-season games in both <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2025\/08\/18\/wnbas-vancouver-game-highlights-sports-growth-in-canada\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2025\/08\/18\/wnbas-vancouver-game-highlights-sports-growth-in-canada\/\">Vancouver<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2025\/09\/23\/wnbas-tempo-add-molson-belanger-to-ownership-roster-with-two-games-set-for-montreal\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2025\/09\/23\/wnbas-tempo-add-molson-belanger-to-ownership-roster-with-two-games-set-for-montreal\/\">Montreal<\/a>. Even after adjusting for the WNBA\u2019s \u201csmaller player pool,\u201d Canadian women\u2019s talent \u201chasn\u2019t kept pace with the men\u2019s boom.\u201d Sky G Kia Nurse was one of four Canadians on rosters last season, representing 2.2% of all WNBA players compared to 4.5% of NBA players from Canada in 2024-25. That is \u201calready in the process of changing,\u201d and the Tempo\u2019s arrival could \u201caccelerate the women\u2019s basketball pipeline in Canada.\u201d The success of the Raptors and Canadian NBA players, plus the women reaching the Olympics every cycle from 2012, has \u201cincreased the profile for women\u2019s basketball among the next generation of players coming up now.\u201d Nurse is \u201coptimistic\u201d that \u201cwithin the next decade, with continued expansion creating more roster spots, Canada can field a women\u2019s national team made up almost exclusively of WNBA players like we see now on the men\u2019s side.\u201d And she \u201csees the Tempo playing a role in making that vision reality\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/wnba\/story\/_\/id\/47891749\/wnba-toronto-tempo-expansion-2026-canada-team\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">ESPN.com, 2\/11<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Toronto Tempo, one of the WNBA\u2019s expansion teams set to debut in 2026, \u201cwant to represent all&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[402,99,434,1765],"class_list":["post-464662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-basketball","tag-sports","tag-wnba","tag-womens-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}