For many of you reading this, the Toronto Tempo have been the only WNBA team you’ve ever followed. In some ways, I envy you. Because I had to break up with my old club in order to root, root, root for the home team. And this was the week when my ex spent some real time with my current.
How this impacted me presumably didn’t affect either team too much, as I suspect they’d be unaware of it/me. But it was an emotional whirlwind.
Now, in some ways, I’d experienced this before. When the Raptors came into being, I had to withdraw my allegiance to the Spurs. A team at that time featuring David Robinson and Rod Strickland, one a mistake-free master of fundamentals, the other a razzle-dazzle guard with street skills galore. My perfect duo. But living in Canada, particularly in a pre-streaming era, and with a Western Conference team, this fandom was largely theoretical. I didn’t actually watch that many Spurs games. It was always something of a placeholder, a “Well, it’s fun to have someone to root for, so they’ll do.” When the Raptors came along, it was easy to make the switch.
That was not my experience parting with the Lynx.
Granted, the decision to follow that particular team had been a bit arbitrary. As I’ve mentioned before, it was during the pandemic, and a bunch of us just picked teams to root for, and I went with the one with two Canadians, and where I had some family. (I even went to the State Fair once!) But then, over the years, I fell for them. My love for the W came through them.
Which is why, at the risk of the parasocial, it did in some ways feel like ending a relationship. Like, it was long-distance, so there was an understanding that I might watch other teams. But then I met a local team that I thought I could be happy with and have a future with. And though it felt callous to think this way, I knew I could get most of the things I had with my long-distance team… and more. Including all those things you can only get when you’re in the same building.
And yes, though I maintain the fact I’m in midlife is a chronological coincidence in this situation, I was also moving from a storied franchise to a younger one.
At this point, I’m clearly happy in my new team relationship. But when you know that distance was the deciding factor in ending the old relationship, you can’t help but have some lingering feelings. And then you see your old team again, twice in one week. And they look great. Maybe it’s the new haircut? (Thanks to Olivia Miles, this works both literally and metaphorically.) Really, they’re thriving, somehow more than when you were together.
Which is why they beat the hell out of your new team.
Okay, Tuesday’s game wasn’t so bad. 100-93, and it was on TV, so it wasn’t so terrible. Also because TV is funnily still more of a me-and-the-Lynx thing – yes, my older team I watched on TV, while my younger team wants me to go out more. But I digress, probably to delay talking about Thursday’s game. Which was kind of painful.
Though interestingly, watching it, it really didn’t feel that way. For the first half of the game, it felt like we were trading baskets. But then they started making a few more, and we started making a few less, and suddenly, it was out of hand. Final score: 104-72… with that 32-point differential marking the largest loss in (brief) franchise history.
And the crazy thing is that nobody really went off for the Lynx. Albeit with most of the fourth quarter devoted to garbage time, their top scorer only had sixteen. Well, three of them had sixteen – Phee, Court, and Olivia Miles – while McBuckets added thirteen, and Dorka Juhasz came through with twelve. Possibly because I mocked someone online for saying we might trade a first-round pick and the rights to Masha for her. (More on that later.) The top scorer in the game was actually Laura Juskaite, who got off to a hot start and finished with nineteen.
But the story of the game was really turnovers, and that’s what made it hard. Because it’s one thing to lose to a superior team, but it really felt like the Tempo did a lot to defeat themselves. TWENTY-TWO turnovers, compared to ten for the Lynx, leading to THIRTY-ONE points, versus ten. I feel free to say it was embarrassing… because Sandy Brondello said as much in a post-game interview.
There’s good news, though, at least for me – though the Lynx are arguably the easier team to root for right now, I didn’t want to. Turns out I’m happy with the Tempo, even through our struggles. And what really brought this home for me was what I’m calling a Tale of Two Rookies.
I refer to Olivia Miles and Kiki Rice. I’ve talked about Olivia Miles a couple times already in this post, and with good reason. She’s the odds-on favourite for Rookie of the Year, and I love watching her play. She’s truly a basketball virtuoso. But Kiki Rice made her long-anticipated return in the first game… and in the second game, the one here, the one I saw live, she knocked down a couple of threes and, on one play, knocked down her defender. And that’s where my excitement came from.
Seems at this point I would rather lose with the Tempo than win with the Lynx. And from a narrative perspective, maybe it’s that wanting to win and wanting to get better is easier to love than being great.
Which brings us to the trade for Aneesah Morrow.
On the one hand, it made me look bad. Because I keep telling people online that you can’t get something for nothing... and then we basically did! It’s truly unbelievable. We acquired one of the best rebounders in the league, with a lot of offensive abilities in the post, AND a former teammate of Marina Mabrey’s for the rights to a player who might never have played here (Maria “Masha” Kliundikova, formerly of the Lynx) and a SECOND-round pick, which rarely amount to much. Honestly, it’s a steal.
But more than that, it’s a move for the future and a move for now. (The double-double machine is only 23 and still on her rookie deal!) And that says something. With a first-round draft pick, having lost nine of our last ten, a lot of franchises would have been in tank mode. But we kept pressing forward.
And that’s why, while I’ll always be rooting for the Lynx when there’s no conflict and wishing them well always, my heart is with the Tempo. I know we may suffer more defeats, but hey, I also know that we feel more indefatigable.