Brittney Sykes drops career-high 38 points in Tempo's historic win

Guard Brittney Sykes scored a career-high 38 points to lead the expansion Toronto Tempo to a 106-96 road win over the Los Angeles Sparks on Sunday, the first road victory in franchise history.

The win came as redemption for the Tempo, who had fallen to the Sparks 99-95 on Friday in a game where they trailed 21-2 in the opening minutes before an unsuccessful comeback. Two days later, Toronto built a 49-40 halftime lead, pushed it to as much as 17 in the second half, and never trailed in the final three quarters.

Sykes was the engine. She got 14 of her points before halftime and finished a perfect 15-for-15 from the free-throw line, part of a Tempo performance that went 39-of-42 from the stripe in a game that saw 59 fouls called. When the Sparks cut what had been a comfortable lead to 89-83 late in the fourth on a 10-3 run capped by Kelsey Plum free throws, Sykes answered with five straight points to push it back to 94-83 with 3:51 to play.

Sykes' previous career high of 35 points came in 2022, when she was wearing a Sparks uniform. On Sunday, she did it back in the building where she set the old mark, against the team that traded her.

"[With Toronto] I'm getting to do what I want to do, which is score the ball," Sykes said. The coaching staff, she added, has given her the green light to play her game.

Head coach Sandy Brondello pointed to a different team altogether from the one that had been buried 21-2 on Friday. "I think we had a lot more urgency today," Brondello said. "We were way more connected."

That energy translated on the defensive end, where the Tempo managed to contain the Sparks' front court even while playing shorthanded. Toronto held 10-time All-Star Nneka Ogwumike to 17 points and limited Cameron Brink to just seven, doing so without forwards Temi Fagbenle and Isabelle Harrison, both sidelined by injury. Brondello said before the game that Fagbenle is day-to-day, while Harrison continues to recover from a hand injury sustained in training camp. Plum led the Sparks with 28, and Dearica Hamby added 21 points and nine rebounds.

The front court absences were not the only ones Brondello had to manage. Starting point guard Julie Allemand was ruled out on Sunday with a hip injury, also considered day-to-day, pressing rookie Kiki Rice into her first career start. Rice, who won an NCAA championship at UCLA last month and was the sixth overall pick in the 2026 WNBA Draft, made her return to Los Angeles a memorable one. She finished with a career-high 19 points, five rebounds and two assists, shot 8-for-10 from the line, and played the entire game without committing a turnover.

"Whether I'm starting or not, I'm just gonna go out there and do my job," Rice said.

Brondello praised the rookie's composure. "We were very excited when we drafted her," she said. "We're still very excited about her ceiling, where she could get to, and that was a massive game to step into with Julie out and play like she did."

The win evens the Tempo's record at 2-2 through their first four games, all on the road, for a roster Brondello has acknowledged was assembled in "a hot minute" as an expansion club. The road trip continues Tuesday in Phoenix against the Mercury, followed by a Thursday matchup with the Minnesota Lynx, before Toronto returns home Saturday to host fellow expansion franchise the Portland Fire.