TORONTO — The billboard struck my eye immediately. I was returning to Toronto from the States, still a stranger in a new country, a visitor on a work visa who landed a lottery ticket job to co-host alongside the most popular sports-talk host in the country.
This was August 2018. Kawhi Leonard’s legendary bounce-bounce-bounce-bounce-in to beat the Sixers in the Eastern Conference finals on the way to an improbable NBA title was still nine months away. But there it was in the Bathurst and Queens Quay area of downtown Toronto: a massive billboard featuring Kia Nurse in her Team Canada uniform overlooking the Harbourfront Community Center, arguably the most famous pickup basketball court. I snapped a photo and posted it to Twitter. Maybe this is hyperbole upon reflection, but it felt like a moment for women’s basketball, at least in Canada.
Nearly five years later, I found myself sitting in Section 117 at Scotiabank Arena watching the WNBA’s first game in Canada, a preseason contest between the Minnesota Lynx and Chicago Sky. It was a near-full arena — every seat in the upper deck was basically filled for a preseason game — filled with orange-clad fans and so many humans under the age of 18. The crowd cheered at signs such as “Future season ticket holder.” Every shot on the JumboTron had young girls somewhere on the screen.
Toronto’s winter weather can be colder than Cersei Lannister, but Saturday was something out of San Diego: a 67-degree day (19 Celsius) with perfect sunshine. The energy downtown was massive, with the WNBA game and the Blue Jays (against the Braves) starting within an hour of each other. Toronto deputy mayor Jennifer McKelvie proclaimed Saturday “Welcome WNBA Day.” Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said people would look back on the exhibition game in Canada as a pivotal moment in the league’s expansion footprint.
The game was an audition for a WBNA franchise. Toronto is one of the cities frequently mentioned by WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert, and last week in an online Q&A with Sports Business Journal editor Austin Karp, Engelbert listed several places when talking about expansion, including Toronto, the Bay Area, Portland, Nashville, Charlotte, Denver and Austin. ESPN’s M.A. Voepel, who has covered this league with depth for decades, published a good piece on expansion Saturday.
Engelbert held a news conference inside Scotiabank Arena 70 minutes before tipoff and answered numerous questions on Toronto as an expansion play. She repeated much of what she has said publicly: The city is one of 10 finalists being considered, and Toronto has scored highly on all the data points the league is looking for. She called the WNBA Canada game a seminal moment regarding its global initiatives. She said she has spoken to several interested ownership groups in Canada. On that note, Raptors vice chairman and team president Masai Ujiri watched the game from the front row with his family. So did Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment chairman Larry Tanenbaum.
One Canadian basketball junkie who watched from her home in Chicago was Stacey Dales, the NFL Network broadcaster who in a previous life was one of the best basketball players in the history of Canada. Dales was a two-time All-American at the University of Oklahoma and led the Sooners to the 2002 NCAA basketball title game before losing to an unbeaten UConn team. She was drafted by the Washington Mystics with the No. 3 pick in the 2002 WNBA Draft — still Canada’s highest-ever pick — and played professionally for five years, including two years with the Sky.
“Toronto has proved itself as a basketball city,” Dales said via email. “Not only because of its NBA championship roots but because of the vast talent it has produced that has flooded the NCAA, NBA, WNBA and overseas. The Canadian Basketball program has also grown substantially, giving Canadian players a consistently strong platform on the world stage. I have no doubt that WNBA players and fans would love the experience of a pro team in Toronto. The biggest challenges for any new franchise, more often than not, come down to money. The good thing for Toronto is they’ve demonstrated that an NBA team can live richly there. Professional basketball is played in multiple countries around the world, by all genders. Let’s go, Canada. It’s time!”
Tammy Sutton-Brown, who works as a director of player development for Raptors 905, the G League affiliate of the Raptors, has lived the evolution of women’s basketball in Canada. Only a sprinkle of women’s basketball club teams existed when she was growing up in Markham, Ontario, about 20 miles north of Toronto. Sutton-Brown said she was fortunate to attend a high school that had a coach, George Kraus, who supported women’s basketball, and she credited him for helping her find success in the sport, including playing for club teams.
“I was fortunate to play club basketball because there were not a lot of opportunities for women and very few club teams compared to now,” Sutton-Brown said. “I got my first recruiting letter in Grade 10, and from there it was word of mouth. There was no social media when I was growing up, so no reaching out to coaches and sending them clips of my game. I didn’t know of anyone who went before me, so no asking questions about the recruiting process. I had to figure it out on my own.”
She did, as pioneers do. Sutton-Brown played college basketball for Rutgers under Hall of Famer C. Vivian Stringer, followed by 12 seasons in the WNBA, including two All-Star appearances and a WNBA title. Sutton-Brown said the biggest challenge for a WNBA franchise in Toronto, from her perspective, would be travel, especially if the league continues to fly commercial airlines. Customs and potential delays would be a competitive issue. But she is all in on Toronto.
“Fans are hungry in Toronto. Look how quickly tickets sold for this game,” she said. “That gives a huge indication that the city is not only ready for it but hungry.”
The game aired live on three networks across Canada and the U.S.: Sportsnet and TSN in Canada, and Bally Sports North in the U.S. There were 122 media credentials issued for the game, and Engelbert let out an audible “wow” when she saw the media contingent attending her newser.
Sara Gaiero, the coordinating producer for ESPN’s WNBA coverage and the point person at that company for strategic oversight and management of the coverage, said a team in Toronto would be no different from when ESPN airs the Raptors.
“We know it works and can work because we’ve seen it on the NBA side with the Raptors,” Gaiero said. “From purely a production standpoint, we’ve done games in Canada before successfully. We know the framework and workflows that we need to utilize to do productions. I don’t really have a lot of concern right in that area.”
Having covered many women’s college basketball Final Fours for Sports Illustrated before moving to The Athletic, I had a front-row seat to women’s college basketball’s growth every year. That exploded this year when 9.9 million viewers watched LSU defeat Iowa in the title game. The WNBA has a growth story as well, and what I saw in Toronto on Saturday confirmed again what I have believed since I moved here: The league will thrive here if it comes. As with the Raptors and Blue Jays, the country will adopt the team, even those living outside the greater Toronto area. I’ve never seen a crowd at a pro sporting event in Toronto with more girls. Fans gave the teams a standing ovation after Chicago’s 82-74 win.
This market is ready to pop for women’s basketball. Now let’s see what Engelbert and her team do.
(Photo: Steve Russell / Toronto Star via Getty Images)