Marina Mabrey leads Tempo over Sky, facing her past

Marina Mabrey scored 23 points as the Tempo beat the Sky 111-104 Wednesday night, a reminder of how much her game—and her story—has changed since a turbulent run in Chicago.

There are players who leave a team quietly. Marina Mabrey isn’t one of them.

Wednesday night. she helped the Tempo put a lasting exclamation point on their matchup with the Sky—winning 111-104 while Mabrey scored 23 points on 9-13 shooting. It was the kind of performance that instantly brings fans back to what they already know about her: the step-back threes. the in-between moments that look effortless. the floaters that arrive exactly when defenders think she’s going to settle.

And then. right alongside the highlight reel. there’s the other Mabrey—one defined by temper. competition. and the way she turns emotion into something that can still be controlled. Fans may even remember her as the inventor of the “Crash-Out Jar. ” a running joke about depositing dollars after losing her temper in games.

Now add a new label to the long list. After the Tempo signed Mabrey to a two-year max contract this past offseason, she and Brittney Sykes became the faces of the league’s first Canadian team.

Mabrey didn’t just remind people what she can do. She also made clear how quickly her approach has been shaped by where she’s been.

Her tenure with the Sky ended in a request to be traded from the Sky to the Sun midway through the 2024 season. She arrived in Toronto knowing that the “Mabrey experience contains multitudes. ” because her path has been anything but static: she’s the middle child. one of the best players in the league to have never been named an All-Star. and by the age of 30 she’s already moved through Dallas. Chicago. Connecticut. and now Toronto.

At shootaround before Wednesday’s game, she reflected on how those experiences changed her.

“I’ve been in leadership positions in Chicago and Connecticut where there were some things I still needed to learn. and I’m still learning right now. but I think that I took those things and put it into this team. ” Mabrey told the Sun-Times. “I think finding a home helps a lot too. I’ve jumped around trying to find a situation that works for me and my vision for myself.”.

The Tempo are her fourth team in six years.

Few have cycled through as many situations as Mabrey. Except, perhaps, the Sky.

In Chicago. the instability wasn’t theoretical—it was the daily reality she lived through during the peak instability of the post-2021 championship era. Coach and general manager James Wade, who brought her to Chicago, left in the middle of the 2023 season. Then franchise pillar Kahleah Copper requested a trade.

Mabrey said she took something specific from that chaos: a lesson about staying true to herself even when organizations change around her.

“I think knowing that people will come in and out of organizations, you will have different people to work with, but keeping the vision for yourself that you know is you,” she said. “Regardless of who you’re playing around, who’s coming in, who’s not coming in, who’s leaving.

“I think for me, I maybe lost myself a little bit in Chicago, in trying to figure out who I was alongside everyone. … I lost the vision of who I know I can be.”

Sykes, who has played against Mabrey since childhood, offered a glimpse of what Mabrey is trying to become now. Her vision, according to Sykes, is to become an offensive juggernaut—but one who has learned to wield her emotions instead of being consumed by them.

Tempo coach Sandy Brondello, a two-time WNBA champion, is trying to help make that adjustment feel natural, not forced.

“She’s actually quite funny,” Brondello said of Mabrey. “Now, if she crashes out, it’s usually at the officials. It’s never at her teammates, which is a good thing. Now it’s more like, ‘Just don’t get too high or too low.’

“But that’s her edge. You don’t want to change someone. That’s her competitive fire. But not letting it affect her overall game.”

It’s a kind of precision that reflects how far Mabrey has come since she set the single-season record for three pointers in 2023 with 81. In 2024, she grew her game further.

Still, the price of her departure from Chicago was steep—and it shaped how the Sky operated long before Wednesday night’s final buzzer.

To acquire her from the Wings, James Wade traded away a staggering amount of draft capital: a 2023 first-rounder, a 2024 first-rounder, and a 2025 pick swap.

That trade helped set the tone for a philosophy Jeff Pagliocca has maintained. In Chicago, there would be no tanking, no waiting to strike gold in the draft lottery. Every year, the goal has been to bring in the best players through trades and free agency, at pretty much whatever cost.

So far, the approach hasn’t delivered the postseason success one might hope for— the Sky have missed the postseason the last two years—but it also hasn’t backfired in the dramatic way some feared.

The Mabrey deal shows both the gamble and the math. The 2023 pick the Sky surrendered ultimately became a worthless late first-rounder, and the 2025 swap was canceled entirely when the Wings won the No. 1 pick on their own. Had the Sky been able to retain Mabrey, the trade could have aged as a win.

As it stands, Mabrey’s production has looked like the version Wade likely wanted all along. She is now scoring 18.8 points per game, a level current coach Tyler Marsh respects.

Marsh’s keys for success against the Tempo leaned directly into what makes Mabrey dangerous: keeping her “in vision” at all times, given how quickly she gets off her shot.

“I’m a big fan of Marina, the toughness and competitiveness that she plays with — you accept some other stuff that comes with it,” Marsh said. “I remember when we played Connecticut last year and I got thrown out of that game, I saw Marina after the game, I said, ‘I pulled a you tonight.’”

The respect goes both ways.

Mabrey, for her part, said at shootaround that Pagliocca has built a tougher and more talented roster—two of his primary goals.

By the time the game ended and the scoreboard settled at 111-104, it looked like the only thing truly unchanged was the intensity. For Mabrey and the Sky, the rivalry runs through all the same details—shots, emotions, momentum.

And despite the turbulence on both sides, the night still carried one clear message: both teams can see the best in each other.

Marina Mabrey Tempo Sky WNBA Brittney Sykes Sandy Brondello Tyler Marsh Jeff Pagliocca James Wade Kahleah Copper Toronto Chicago