Tempo GM Wright Rogers leans heavily on international talent
It’s not like the WNBA has been ignoring basketball talent outside of North America. Since the early days of the league, players such as Michele Timms of Australia, widely considered the first international ever to play in the league in 1997, or Belgian Ann Wauters, who was the first European to be selected first overall in the draft in 2000, have come over and had careers here.
But Toronto Tempo GM Monica Wright Rogers has jumped into the international pool with both feet and is giving no indications she is done. A quick glance at the Tempo roster tells the story right away. Of the 13 players currently on the active roster, six are from the United States, one is Canadian, and another six come from all over Europe.
That’s not the biggest contingent of international players by any means on a WNBA roster this season. The New York Liberty lead the way with 10, but the Liberty has a history. Toronto is just getting started.
The diverse roster was not an accident. The Tempo made the decision from the outset to build a team that could compete from the very beginning. There was to be no slow build, like the Portland Fire have mapped out drafting young and expecting another high, franchise-altering pick in their second visit in the draft and maybe a third in Year 3.
The Tempo lured three established WNBA talents with an unprecedented three $1-million-plus contracts in Marina Mabrey, Brittney Sykes and Temi Fagbenle. With a salary cap of $7-million and the rest of the roster to fill out, it only made sense to go overseas shopping.
And this was a very comfortable market for Wright Rogers and her staff. During WNBA off-seasons, Wright Rogers played extensively in Europe throughout her own career, with stops in Poland, Turkey, Australia, South Korea, and Iceland. A planned season in Israel never got off the ground.
“You’re getting players that have played against WNBA players in Europe,” she said. “And you get them at a discount, essentially.”
On top of that, she has surrounded herself with a nice mix of international basketball experience that includes assistant GM Eli Horowitz, head coach Sandy Brondello, as well as associate head coach Olaf Lange. There’s also Mark Schindler, the team’s manager of Scouting and Basketball strategy.
Between them, there are years of experience playing, working and scouting within Europe, all of which gives Wright Rogers what she considers a competitive advantage when it comes to sifting through the WNBA-ready talent playing in Europe.
What Wright Rogers is bringing to the Tempo from Europe is instant professionalism. Being a product of the NCAA pipeline, Wright Rogers is an obvious supporter of that path.
“I firmly believe that (the NCAA) is a great pipeline,” she said. “It’s a great developmental window for players. But on the contrary, in Europe if they’re not coming over here to play in the NCAA, a lot of those players have been professionals since the age of 16 or 17. They’re already integrated into a professional cadence. So there’s less of a learning curve into our professional environment in the WNBA.”
Wright Rogers wants it made very clear that she is not inventing something here with a comparatively diverse roster than something most of the WNBA has done at one time or another. She points out Portland, their sister expansion club joining the league this year, have a more international focus than most and that’s on a team that is preaching patience with its build.
“We just found something that made sense for us and we want to make it a niche skill set of ours for sure,” Wright Rogers said. “I’ve played international, so I know this landscape and I have made a ton of connections. I also have (Eli) who knows these players by heart and what players are coming up through the pipeline.”
On top of that, Horowitz has tapped into this little group of international scouts not necessarily with the Tempo, but a group that are constantly monitoring the talent overseas. “The media wouldn’t know their names,” Wright Rogers said. “It’s a very niche group.”
The Tempo made a huge score internationally, getting Maria Conde, the widely regarded best player in the world not playing in the WNBA, to agree to come over after years of resisting leaving her beloved homeland of Spain. Wright Rogers believes that was a combination of timing, attention and the presence of a head coach that players around the world just want to play for.
“I think Sandy Brondello had a lot to do with that,” Wright Rogers said. “I think knowing that you’re coming into a situation with a coach with a world-wide reputation for being a players’ coach was a big part of it.”
The Tempo also made the effort to go and visit her in Spain, and Wright Rogers believed that helped sell her on the team as well. “We didn’t talk to her, but she probably saw the big Tempo logo in the stands,” she said.
Another pipeline to talent Wright Rogers believes she can exploit are the young Americans that initially begin in the WNBA but quickly realize they aren’t ready, and find themselves overseas working on their game. “After year three or four, their games have matured and now they’re ready, but nobody’s really monitoring that,” Wright Rogers said. It’s how she landed Natasha Mack and brought her to Phoenix after the versatile forward went from being a 16th-overall pick to out of the league in less than a year.
“When she came in, everyone was just like ‘Oh my gosh, like, let’s do this again’,” Wright Rogers recalled. It’s a feeling she liked and one she would like to replicate many times over here in Toronto. She already is well on her way.
