Tempo vs. Storm: Marina Mabrey Drops 26 as Toronto Earns First Victory in Franchise History

The logo 3 is usually a flex. On Wednesday night in Toronto it was closer to a birth certificate. Marina Mabrey let one go from 29 feet with a little over four minutes to play, it dropped, the Tempo were up 10, and a brand-new team finally got to find out what the good side of a WNBA box score looks like.

Toronto beat the Seattle Storm 86-73 at Coca-Cola Coliseum for the first victory in franchise history. Mabrey finished with 26 points and six 3-pointers, Brittney Sykes added 18 points, eight rebounds and six assists, and the Tempo are 1-1 after dropping their debut to Washington 68-65 last Friday. That first crowd got a sellout of 8,210 and a Shania Twain singalong on the Karaoke Cam. The 8,142 who showed up Wednesday got the better souvenir.

The Storm Had This One Until They Very Much Did Not

For two quarters, this had the look of an established franchise teaching a new one a lesson. Toronto took the opening period 27-22, but Seattle shot its way back, hitting half of its field goals before the break and going 6 of 13 from deep. Dominique Malonga had 14 at intermission, Stefanie Dolson and Jade Melbourne had 10 each, and a 9-0 Seattle run that began late in the second and spilled into the third turned a 44-38 hole into a 47-44 lead. The halftime score sat in the middle of all that: Storm 45, Tempo 44.

Then the third quarter stopped being polite. Toronto ripped off an 18-6 stretch that ended at 65-56, and Mabrey and Maria Conde accounted for 14 Toronto points in the quarter. Seattle clawed back to 67-62 by the horn, and if you had turned the game off right there, you would have assumed a tight finish was on the way.

It was not. Mabrey poured in eight points during the first six minutes of the fourth, including a pair of 3s roughly 60 seconds apart, and the second was that bomb from near the logo for 81-71. From there, the Storm offense went into airplane mode. Seattle hit one field goal over the final six minutes, a Dolson floater with 2:33 left, while Sykes went to the line and Nyara Sabally finished a driving layup off a Mabrey feed to put the lid on it.

Marina Mabrey Finally Got Some Company

Mabrey was the whole argument. She went 9 of 20 overall and 6 of 11 from 3, piled up four steals, four rebounds and three assists, and did all of it in 29 minutes without committing a foul. She scored 27 in the opener too, but that night Toronto shot 17 for 63 as a team and she mostly had to admire her own work. This time, the help showed up.

Sykes did her damage at the line, going 8 of 9, and crashed for four offensive rebounds on top of everything else. Conde gave Toronto 16 off the bench with four 3s and eight boards while playing through five fouls. Rookie Kiki Rice, the Tempo's first-round draft pick, added 12 on 5-of-9 shooting. The sneakiest line belonged to Julie Allemand: two points, six assists, three steals and a plus-19 that led everybody on the floor.

Malonga paced Seattle with 21 points and seven rebounds, but only seven of those points came after halftime. Dolson was sharp, scoring 16 on 6-of-8 shooting while carrying five fouls of her own, and Melbourne chipped in 14 points and six assists off the bench along with four turnovers. Flau'jae Johnson, the No. 8 pick in the draft, never found it, finishing with seven points in 29 minutes on 2-of-7 shooting.

The Turnover Tax

Here is the strangest part: Seattle was the better shooting team. The Storm made 47% of their shots to Toronto's 43%, and they still lost by 13, because they simply did not take enough of them. Seattle attempted 58 shots to Toronto's 69, and the reason is the same one that has been wrecking teams since the peach basket: 19 turnovers, with the Tempo collecting 11 steals.

Toronto turned those giveaways into 26 points, while Seattle managed just 14 off Toronto's 12 turnovers. Toss in nine offensive rebounds to Seattle's three and a 17-2 fast-break margin, and the math gets ugly quickly. The real swing came in that third-quarter run, when the Tempo stopped trading baskets and started playing downhill. Seattle's jumper went with it. After that 6-of-13 first half, the Storm went 1 of 7 from deep the rest of the way.

The Numbers That Did the Talking

• 26-14: Toronto's edge in points off turnovers, courtesy of those 19 Seattle giveaways.
• 17-2: The Tempo's fast-break advantage, which is less a stat than a formal complaint.
• 11 of 29: Toronto from 3, after going 5 for 25 in the opener against Washington.
• 1 of 7: Seattle from deep after halftime.
• 9-3: Toronto's margin on the offensive glass, with Sykes alone out-grabbing the entire Storm roster, 4-3.

What It Means in Toronto and Seattle

Toronto is 1-1 overall and 1-1 at home, which does not sound like much until you remember that zero and one are very different numbers. An expansion team only gets one first win, and this one came by 13 rather than on some late fluke. The next test comes on the road, with back-to-back games against Los Angeles starting Friday.

Seattle falls to 1-2 after a 91-80 home loss to Golden State and a win at Connecticut on Sunday. The Storm were already expected to be without starter Ezi Magbegor for six to eight weeks because of a right foot injury, and that second half will not make the wait feel any shorter. They wrap up their three-game road trip at Indiana on Sunday.

Not Quite Seattle's Tempo

In Whiplash, J.K. Simmons spends an entire movie telling a young drummer that he is either rushing or dragging and that neither is acceptable. Seattle got the same note over the final six minutes, one field goal's worth of dragging against a team that had spent its first week in the league learning how to keep time. Not quite my tempo, as the man said. Toronto's, though, finally sounds like a winning one.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Game details as reported by the Associated Press and WNBA.com.