Some homecomings feel warm, and there are ones that feel unfinished. Sandy Brondello’s return to Barclays Center on Wednesday was both at once.
Brondello, now coaching the expansion Toronto Tempo, walked into the building she helped transform and left with a defeat. The New York Liberty beat her team 97-82, dropping Toronto to 5-5 on the season. But before tip-off, the crowd of 14,574 gave her something no scoreline can take back: a standing ovation.
The Liberty played a tribute video in the first timeout for Sandy Brondello, her husband and former assistant Olaf Lange, and former players Isabelle Harrison and Nyara Sabally, all of whom left New York to join the Tempo this offseason. Brondello waved to the crowd as the arena responded. Former players lined up to embrace her during pregame warmups. Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones posed with her for a photo after the final buzzer.
“I have so many great friendships here, and that’s not going to change just because I coach a different team,” Brondello said.
Brondello’s connection to this franchise is not sentimental. She arrived in New York in 2022 and inherited a team that had won 14 games combined across the two prior seasons. She left with a 123-64 overall record, the most wins in franchise history, and one WNBA championship ring earned in 2024. That title was the Liberty’s first in franchise history and New York’s first pro basketball championship in more than 50 years.
The respect in that building on Wednesday was earned, not performed. Stewart, one of Sandy Brondello’s most vocal supporters through the coaching change last offseason, framed it clearly before the game.
“Knowing that she was a part of the group that brought this franchise’s first championship, that’s something where she’ll always be etched in the books here in New York and in Brooklyn specifically,” Stewart said.
And yet, the departure was not clean. After a first-round playoff exit in 2025, general manager Jonathan Kolb moved on. A lack of “alignment” with the front office, as Brondello described it on a podcast last November, played a role. Some questioned whether she had maximized the talent around her. Stewart, for her part, said she saw the change coming. Jonquel Jones said she did not, and apologetically texted Sandy Brondello when she found out.
“There are some aspects where I understand,” Jones said, “and there’s also some aspects where this is somebody that you won a championship with, you did something historic with. A little bit of both.”
Sandy Brondello’s Toronto Project Is Already Testing Her In A Different Way
The Tempo came into Wednesday ranked seventh in the league, a legitimate postseason contender in their first season. But the loss exposed real defensive problems. Toronto surrendered a league-worst 45.3 points in the paint per game, and on Wednesday, they allowed the Liberty to shoot 14-of-32 from three-point range. Jones dropped 22 points and 17 rebounds, 17 of those points coming in the first half alone. The Liberty outrebounded Toronto 40-32.
“There’s another level we need to go to defensively,” Sandy Brondello said. “We gave up too many open 3s. We were late on everything. We’re still learning.”
The Tempo is also dealing with injuries. Center Temi Fangbenle is out with a right shoulder issue, Harrison has a right hand injury, and rookie guard Kiki Rice, one of their best players this season, left Wednesday’s game after landing awkwardly late in the fourth quarter. Brondello had no update on Rice’s status after the game.
Brondello has been through this before. She won a championship in Phoenix in her first year there in 2014, then was let go in 2021 before the Liberty called. Each exit has led somewhere new. In Toronto, she is the first coach to lead a WNBA team in Canada, and the Tempo’s early foothold in the playoff race suggests the project has real legs.
The standing ovation at Barclays was a fitting send-off for what Sandy Brondello built. What comes next in Toronto is the more pressing question. If the defensive issues do not get resolved and Kiki Rice’s injury proves serious, the Tempo’s postseason window could narrow fast. Brondello has rebuilt before.
