After beginning their inaugural season 9-9, the Toronto Tempo have now lost seven-straight games and they’re 1-9 over their last team games. Their overall record is 10-20, 10 games below .500 and seven games out of the No. 8 seed.
Will a trade for Aneesah Morrow from the Connecticut Sun be enough to turn their season back towards the playoffs?
On Tuesday, Morrow made her Tempo debut, playing 16 minutes off the bench in Toronto’s eventual
loss to the Golden State Valkyries. Morrow finished with eight points and five boards, making 50 percent of her shots from the field while also hitting a 3-pointer.
Even as the playoffs remain a long shot for Canada’s expansion team, here’s what Tempo fans can expect Morrow to add to the Tempo on both ends of the floor.
Morrow undoubtedly will address the Tempo’s rebounding woes
Morrow’s value has always been rooted in her potential, but for Toronto, she fits a need that will help immediately impact winning.
The Tempo have struggled to find a consistent starting forward who can anchor team rebounding and keep other teams off the glass. Laura Juškaitė, Nyara Sabally, María Conde and Isabelle Harrison have all had their moments in the starting lineup, but none of the four have stood out as permanent solutions to Toronto’s frontcourt dilemma.
Harrison is the only member of the Tempo averaging more than five rebounds per game, and her 6.1 average pales in comparison to Morrow, who was up to 8.9 rebounds per game in Connecticut—good for eighth in the league. Morrow also finished her rookie season first in the WNBA in defensive rebound percentage, meaning that she brought down the highest percentage of available defensive rebounds when she was in the game.
That’s huge for Toronto, as they have been the second worst defensive rebounding team in the WNBA and have allowed the most offensive rebounds to opponents of any team this season. Limiting second chance opportunities should help the Tempo shore up their defense, which frequently lets them down in close games.
Morrow’s offensive impact is more of a question
While Morrow’s rebounding impact is enough to validate Toronto’s trade, her offense lives in more of a gray area.
She creates less than 40 percent of her own shots, and her efficiency, while improving, is a reminder of how early she still is in her professional career. She shoots seven percent worse at the rim than league average, and still hasn’t found consistency from the three-point line.
Her willingness to become a 3-point shooter has been admirable, and it’s a good sign for her becoming a more versatile forward in the future. Most people rightfully associate Morrow with her two collegiate seasons at LSU (where she only attempted one 3 per game), but it’s always worth remembering that she shot over six 3s per game during her sophomore season at DePaul. She was playing with the ultimate green light that year, but it was still enough volume to be a notable development in her scoring profile. In Connecticut this season, Morrow was up to 3.4 attempts per game, almost double her rookie 1.8 attempt average.
Tempo head coach Sandy Brondello, however, may be hesitant to deploy Morrow on the perimeter, as the Tempo, if they continue to push for the playoffs, are playing for more than the Sun and therefore have slightly less tolerance for experiments.
Morrow’s offense will likely be dependent on the synergy that she can build with Toronto’s guards, especially Marina Mabrey and Julie Allemand. If Morrow can fit into their ballscreen game and be an efficient catch-and-drive threat, then she could easily find herself as a top five scorer on the Tempo roster.
Ultimately, Morrow’s immediate value will come primarily from her rebounding.
She’s not a premier defensive anchor, nor is her scoring elite enough to slot into a new system without work. More importantly, however, she adds another young piece to a new franchise that had been tip-toeing the line between win-now roster construction and building towards the future.
