When an expansion team enters a league, you’re bound to see players from the same former teams recruited to their roster.
Last weekend, in a Hollywood double feature with the Los Angeles Sparks, Brittney Sykes, Marina Mabrey and Ontario’s own Kia Nurse weren’t going to let Tinseltown forget that they used to bleed purple whilst looking for WNBA gold.
Splitting the weekend series, the new franchise in the W, alongside the return of the Portland Fire out west, the Toronto Tempo, lost their first game in LA to the Sparks, as the home team edged a 99-95 victory in La La Land after a close dance.
Toronto took the second though, to end the weekend with a ten-point win, 106-96, not to mention, the Tempo’s first franchise win on the road…ever.
Talk about making history and upping the franchise namesake, like the SLAM cover of Brittney Sykes and Marina Mabrey.
Mabrey was nursing downtown Figueroa, like Kia, but it was Sykes that wasn’t kidding around, sneaker stamping on the Sparks short fuse. Back when Britt Bundlez was a City of Angels disciple, she was as dedicated to defence as only the brotherhood of Lakers wishes Luka could be. Now, her all round game makes her not only a Most Improved Player of the Year candidate, to go with a Defensive Player trophy she’s deserved for years, but a budding superstar, too.
Maybe with Mabrey, and Nurse in reserve, this expansion pack has a core that could clinch Canada’s second hoops championship one day, sooner than later.
Hey, nobody thought the Raptors could do it! And last year’s WNBA expansion team, the Golden State Valkyries, came out of the gate, riding sword and steed, behind 2025 Coach of the Year, Natalie Nakase.
Just wait until UCLA’s Kiki Rice (the sixth pick for The 6) starts throwing it up like Glen, same last name, of Laker, Charlotte and Miami Heat flame-thrower fame.
Sure, up North, and excited about the WNBA’s expansion like Detroit, Cleveland and Philadelphia will be in years to come, we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves, but Sykes isn’t. Slim led the T-Dot with 27 points, seven assists, four rebounds, and that many steals in the Tempo’s first temperature check against LA (May 15th), when Kelsey Plum plugged them for her own 27.
Two days later, in the revenge game, not only did Brittney spear her team on to a historical victory, she did so by making her own personal best with a career high 38 points. Adding three assists, a trio of steals and even a block to the party. All whilst committing only three turnovers, the same number as the previous game.
Three 25-point games in a row. Not to mention a 30 for 30 with Mabrey against the Mercury, making more history. Sykes hasn’t scored like this since her Syracuse salad days.
Setting up her own fast-breaks, on the defensive end, with hands smarter than Marcus, Sykes carved her way through the hardwood, cutting up LA’s D like fruits and vegetables. You know she’s eating, too. Giving it to LA for Toronto, like Drake to Kendrick, and a few other ballers familiar with that Cali’ town, dropping three albums on the same New Music Friday.
They’re not like her.
Especially when she becomes the ice-woman.
A former fan favourite during her Los Angeles times. Seen dancing at practice to ‘Sweet Love’ by Anita Baker. Endearing legends like Seimone Augustus around her. Everyone is in Slim’s rapture now.
All Star performances matched with defensive prowess, there will be more than Player of the Week awards soon held under the X and O mind of Brittney Sykes’ headband. Right now, she is one of the league’s Most Valuable Player’s for her brand-new franchise.
And if that wasn’t enough, she leads the WNBA in the art of WAR metrics. That records a player’s impact on getting W’s through net points and wins above replacement (there’s your WAR) metrics.
These net points, crediting a player with how they add or take away from a team’s point differential on both ends of the 94-feet, are applied with WAR to see how many wins an individual player makes for their team, compared with what would happen if an average player took their place.
Brittney Sykes is far from an average player, and even for a team cobbled together by an expansion draft, no one is taking her roster spot. After stormy stints in Seattle and DC with the Washington Mystics, it seems Slim has now found her home with We The North.
Yet instead of an OVO owl, the Toronto Tempo mascot is a cobra. You can see it iced out around Britt’s neck in the team locker room, as she celebrated being one of only two players to consecutively record 25 or more points on a double-digit perfect free-throw percentage. She leads the league with 10.4 a game, making over 90% of them, for the record.
Brittney is also the third player in 30-year WNBA history to have a perfect free-throw percentage with 15 or more attempts in the regular season.
That’s venom. All teeth. No anti.
After a unanimous Unrivalled campaign, Sykes is showing she has none in the W.
Now, that’s a win for the Tempo.
