The Toronto Tempo are back in action at 3 p.m. today against Paige Bueckers and the Dallas Wings at the Coca-Cola Coliseum, after more than a week off due to the Commissioner’s Cup Championship. The Tempo sit 9-10 in the standings, in ninth place in their push for the eight-team WNBA playoffs, with the team’s next seven games coming in Canada, either at home in Toronto or as part of the Cross-Canada series in Montréal. All seven games are against teams above the Tempo in the standings. It will be,
in short, a pivotal stretch.
Last time, we looked at some of the larger trends in the Tempo’s season, from Toronto’s rash of injuries to offensive synergy between Brittney Sykes and Marina Mabrey to a defence still trying to catch up to the offence. This time, we’ll do something different: it’s a breakdown of three plays that say something about the Tempo more broadly, a sort of metonymy (net-onymy? metony-Mabrey? The puns are endless), or part for the whole, that reflects how suggestive this seven-game stretch will be for Toronto.
Play 1: Cooking with Chef Mabrey
The most prominent of the Tempo’s 19 games thus far has to be the record-setting performance by Mabrey, who scored 53 points in a 125-97 thumping of the Los Angeles Sparks to kick off the current homestand. It didn’t take particularly long, either, for Mabrey, who became the third player in WNBA history (Liz Cambage, A’ja Wilson) to hit that number. The explosion brought Mabrey up to 13.1 points per game for her career, the first time her career average has crossed the 13-point mark.
As noted, the Tempo offence is carefully constructed to get looks for Mabrey. One of her most clutch shots this season typifies both that staple of the offence and how important Mabrey has been to the Tempo offence in return. In Toronto’s first game against the Phoenix Mercury, Toronto led by three points late and had the ball in a baseline inbound situation.
Order up:
The Tempo ran a very common “BLOB” (BaseLine Out-of-Bounds) concept, screen the screener, with Mabrey first setting a backscreen for a cutter before using a screen for ƒ%herself to exit to the corner. It’s something that’s been on the menu all season long, from game one against the Mystics, and it’s a comfortable part of Mabrey’s oeuvre at this point. I love her technique adjustment from that first rep against the Mystics—she ghosts (i.e. doesn’t set) her screen against the Mercury, giving her an extra step on her defender compared to her execution against the Mystics.
Mabrey leads the Tempo in win probability added in general and in clutch time, per Inpredictable, and this shot increased Toronto’s in-the-moment win probability by 14 per cent. Including the 9/18 she shot from deep against the Sparks, Mabrey is taking a career-high 15.14 3PA/100 possessions, per pbpstats, and shooting an otherworldly 40.3 per cent on above-the-break threes. Her career high is 34.8 per cent, so there might be a little regression, but with Sykes on or off court, the Tempo won’t mind Chef Mabrey cooking with some serious heat.
Play 2: Sequencing, presented by Sephora (or rather Sandy)
Second: some no-nonsense play sequencing from Sandy Brondello.
Back-to-back plays for the Tempo result in a turnover by Laura Juškaitė and a layup at the rim for Kia Nurse (assisted by Juškaitė). The first sets up the second: Toronto runs the exact same look, but adds the backdoor cut for Nurse to build on (and subvert the expectations of) what the Indiana Fever saw the previous time down. There’s plenty to build on: the weakside spacing, with the 5 (here, Isabelle Harrison) at the elbow and Mabrey in the corner, lends itself nicely to distorting defensive rotations. If you send traditional low defender help off Mabrey, it comes from a non-rim protector, and then the help-the-helper gets quickly 45 cut by the 5. If you send the rim protector help off the 5, the rotation comes from a worse angle and is easily back-doored in turn.
Building out the offence should keep building consistency in the win/loss column. The Tempo, entering the mini Commissioner’s Cup Championship break, were still looking for that same kind of step-by-step consistency.
While that’s net rating, accounting for both sides of the ball, the story of the season for the Tempo is that the squad hasn’t been able to string together wins consistently.
On the plus side, that’s extremely rare for a Sandy Brondello-led squad. She hasn’t coached a team without at least a three-game win streak since her first WNBA head coaching gig, a one-year stint in San Antonio in 2010, which means eight years in Phoenix and four more in New York with more win streaks. It did take until the latter half of the season in her first year with the Liberty to get to three in a row, so know that there’s still time in Toronto, especially with the longer season.
Play 3: Game of Zones
The Mercury took advantage of Mabrey’s absence (Alyssa Thomas, to be fair, was also out serving her one-game suspension) in the second matchup between the two teams. They also benefited from Toronto’s lack of foul-drawing in the 89-80 Phoenix win, as the Tempo shot 6/12 from the free throw line, compared to the Mercury’s 21/29. Another factor: Phoenix sprinkled in a serious dose of zone defense.
Toronto wasn’t without recourse, although having Mabrey and other injured starters would certainly have helped, and one “SLOB” (SideLine Out-of-Bounds) is worth exploring here. This sort of play should be especially useful next Sunday in Montréal against the New York Liberty, who run zone defense at the highest rate in the WNBA.
Against the Mercury’s 2-3, the Tempo had a zone-beater ready. They overloaded the strong side (ball side) after a ball reversal, getting four players to occupy three Mercury defenders. The filled strongside corner + a duck-in from Harrison to occupy the centre of the zone + a step-up screen from Temi Fágbénlé on ex-Tempo Lexi Held gave Julie Allemand a wide-open pull-up three, on which she made no mistake. I love Brondello’s reaction to Allemand’s made three (“See? Finally!”) on the sideline. (Contrast with the second clip, wherein there is no overload and no one to hold DeWanna Bonner in the corner, enabling her to help on the screen for Allemand).
Toronto is a team that wants to shoot the three. Entering the break, they ranked second in the WNBA in three-point rate (percentage of field goals taken from three).
Being able to get clean, location-preferable looks against any coverage the defence throws out there is so important to the Tempo. Toronto is 5-0 when scoring 100+ points, and while the defence continues to round into shape, it’ll be all about putting the ball in the basket, just like James Naismith intended for his Canadian brethren so many years ago (Marina Mabrey would’ve broken Naismith’s brain).
There are a lot more than three plays that will determine this season, but the Tempo’s ability to unlock Marina Mabrey (and, when healthy, other key players in their offence), execute with consistency, and get to their shots no matter the defence are all foundational pillars in what the rest of the season will look like. That starts this week in Canada.
Toronto tips off against the Dallas Wings at 3 p.m on TSN.
