Toronto Tempo: The new WNBA team looking to be “Canada’s team”

When the NBA expanded to Canada in the 1995-96 season, adding the Toronto Raptors and the Vancouver Grizzlies, basketball was a secondary sport in a country dominated by hockey. Three decades later, Canadian players are making their mark in the NBA and on the international scene. Led by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Canada’s men’s national basketball team boasts a full roster of NBA players. The Raptors embraced the role of “Canada’s team,” culminating in their NBA championship in 2019, long after the Grizzlies moved to Memphis in 2001. Now, as they prepare for their inaugural WNBA season, the Toronto Tempo hope to have a similar impact. Although a new collective bargaining agreement must first be reached, the Tempo want to represent all of Canada from the start, playing games across the country during the 2026 season. This could boost the development of women’s basketball in Canada.

The impact that the Tempo will have on women’s basketball will be exponential.

Teresa Resch, president of the Toronto Tempo team

Tempo owner Larry Tanenbaum wasted no time in sharing his vision for the WNBA’s 14th franchise when the league announced its expansion to Toronto 21 months ago. “This team is Canada’s team,” he declared at the May 2024 press conference.

Tanenbaum is the former chairman of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, owner of the Raptors. That shared connection between the Raptors and Tempo helped shape his vision of playing the same role in unifying Canada behind a Toronto-based team. Resch, president of the Tempo team since its launch, has the experience to back it up. She helped the Raptors expand their Canadian presence through the “NBA Canada Series”, which are preseason games held in different cities across Canada. The Raptors left Ontario for the first time for the preseason in 2010, holding a training camp in Vancouver before a preseason clash against British Columbia native Steve Nash. They intensified their efforts after Resch joined the office in 2013, heading to B.C. for training camp every year from 2014 to 2018, while playing preseason games in each of the five largest Canadian provinces during that period. That groundwork paid off when the Raptors broke through in 2019 after years of playoff heartbreak, winning the first Canadian championship in one of the four major North American men’s professional sports leagues since the MLB’s Toronto Blue Jays in 1993. (Toronto FC won the MLS Cup in 2017). Watch parties for the decisive Game 6 of the NBA Finals were held in more than 50 Canadian cities. Having experienced that impact, Tanenbaum and Resch set out to do the same with the Tempo. This time, they have the benefit of being the only Canadian WNBA team from the start.

What makes us unique at this moment is that when the Raptors launched, there were the Grizzlies. The Expos were a big part of the French-speaking Canadian fanbase [for baseball] for a long time. We are in such a unique position that, from the beginning, we can be Canada’s team.

Teresa Resch, president of the Toronto Tempo team

Like the Raptors, the Tempo plan to play across the country. The difference is that the Tempo will play a couple of regular season games in both Vancouver and Montreal. Resch and General Manager Monica Wright Rogers announced that plan during a timeout at the first WNBA regular season game in Canada, when the Atlanta Dream and the Seattle Storm played at Rogers Arena in Vancouver last August.

Playing important games across the country is really important for the Tempo. The league understands this too. They are very supportive.

Teresa Resch, president of the Toronto Tempo team

Support for that 2025 game reflected the excitement for women’s basketball in Vancouver. Almost 16,000 fans attended, and Seattle guard Skylar Diggins described the crowd as “electric.” For that night, Canadian fans treated the Storm, who were nearby, as the home team, but when the Tempo travel to Vancouver to host the 2026 expansion team, the Portland Fire, this August, they will have their own team.

The NBA’s expansion into Canada coincided with the rise in popularity of the league in general, along with demographic changes that made the country more diverse through immigration. However, there is a simple abbreviation for the forces that made Canada a men’s basketball powerhouse more than a century after Ontario native Dr. James Naismith invented the sport: “the Carter effect”, which became the title of a documentary about the trend. Vince Carter, a member of the NBA Hall of Fame, electrified fans on both sides of the border as he became an All-Star and slam dunk champion after being drafted by the Raptors in 1998. A generation of Canadian players grew up watching Carter and hoping to follow in his footsteps. Kia Nurse, an eight-year WNBA veteran and leader of the Canadian women’s national team, was one of them. Born in nearby Hamilton during the Raptors’ inaugural season into an athletic family that has made its mark in football (her father Richard played in the Canadian CFL) and hockey (her brother Darnell plays in the NHL, while her cousin Sarah is on the Canadian women’s hockey team), Nurse followed her mother and older sister into basketball, starting to play at the time when Carter’s star reached its zenith.

You think about all these kids and young people who are now in the NBA, they’re all Vince Carter’s kids. I grew up in the Vince Carter era. He made basketball cool in Canada. Being able to see the impact that he and Steve Nash have had on our young players who are now playing big roles. You look at Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, right? The highest echelon in terms of the NBA. All of those filtered from the Raptors and were able to see that in our hometown.

Kia Nurse, WNBA player

The numbers are astounding. When the NBA expanded to Toronto and Vancouver, there had only been 11 players in league history who had primarily grown up in Canada. (We’ll use that definition throughout this article to include players like Nash, who was born in South Africa before his family moved to Canada the following year. It excludes a handful of Canadian-born players who were raised in the United States, most notably Hall of Famer Bob Houbregs). During the 2024 Olympic Games, Canada’s men’s roster featured 11 players with NBA experience, and many NBA players failed to make the cut or chose not to participate. Some 23 Canadians appeared in NBA games during 2024-25, matching the record set two seasons prior.

To be able to align an entire Olympic team from [the NBA] on the men’s side, to think about that, is simply a nod to what has happened in our country in terms of the excitement surrounding basketball.

Kia Nurse, WNBA player

Even after adjusting for the smaller number of players in the WNBA, Canadian female talent hasn’t kept pace with the men’s surge. Nurse was one of four Canadians on rosters last season, representing 2.2% of all WNBA players, compared to 4.5% of Canadian NBA players in 2024-25. That is already in the process of change, and the arrival of the Tempo could accelerate the channeling of women’s basketball in Canada.

Growing up, for me, there wasn’t a lot of talk or conversation about women’s basketball as a professional path for a lot of women. You didn’t see it as much. It really wasn’t on TV. We didn’t have March Madness playing in the background, we didn’t have the WNBA playing on national television. I know I grew up watching the Raptors and playing with my sister, right?

Kia Nurse, WNBA player

The success of the Raptors and Canadian male players in the NBA, in addition to women reaching the Olympic Games in every cycle since 2012, has increased the profile of women’s basketball among the next generation of players who are now emerging.

There’s a statistic that says that, for the participation of girls in sports in Canada, basketball is number one. Soccer is number two, then volleyball is number three. Like, hockey isn’t even there. So, the next generation, they’re playing these sports and loving these sports. It’s them we’re targeting.

Teresa Resch, president of the Toronto Tempo team

That’s starting to develop at the college level. Duke’s Toby Fournier and Michigan’s Syla Swords, both sophomores, have already made a key impact in the NCAA tournament and are seemingly on their way to the WNBA. Washington sophomore Avery Howell, who doesn’t meet our definition (born and raised in Boise to a Canadian mother) but is a dual citizen, has done the same, teaming up with Swords when Canada reached the semifinals of last summer’s FIBA U19 World Cup.

Now you’re seeing these Canadian players come and not only be on these NCAA teams, but they’re playing stellar roles. They’re getting the chance to be big names in homes there. Our new generation is really good and it’s really fun to watch.

Kia Nurse, WNBA player

Fournier and Swords got on the radar of NCAA coaches playing for Nurse’s AAU program, Kia Nurse Elite, which she founded in 2019 with her father to play on the premier Nike EYBL circuit. So did Aaliyah Edwards of the Connecticut Sun, the most recent Canadian chosen in the first round of the WNBA draft. About 13 Kia Nurse Elite alumni have signed to play Division I basketball in 2026-27, including Swords’ younger sister, Savvy (a four-star recruit heading to Kentucky), the largest class to date.

The best part of my career has been being able to create the Kia Nurse Elite program, do this tutoring, play with these young women on the national team as well. Simply because there were so many people who came before me who helped me and my journey and helped me get to this place that I think it’s my job to keep pushing that.

Kia Nurse, WNBA player

Nurse is optimistic that, in the next decade, with the continuous expansion that creates more positions on the roster, Canada can align a women’s national team composed almost exclusively of WNBA players, as we see now on the men’s side. And he sees the Tempo playing a role in making that vision a reality.

Being able to have that from a WNBA perspective, you hope that within 15, 20 years that also translates. That there are all these players who saw the Tempo grow who are now filtering into the WNBA and are having a big impact.

Kia Nurse, WNBA player