In Toronto, Sandy Brondello getting what she didn’t from Liberty

Sandy Brondello emerged Tuesday morning like a professional wrestler returning after a brief hiatus as she made her first appearance as the head coach of the Toronto Tempo, her trademark grin plastered across her face.

“This is the place I wanted to be,” Brondello said. “To build a team from the ground up, that really excited me.”

But that’s only part of why Brondello stood at the podium in Toronto on this day.

Throughout her 30-plus minute news conference, Brondello repeated several themes: Partnership, collaboration and alignment with the suits upstairs being the main ones — all things that by the end of her tenure in New York may have deteriorated.

But in Toronto, Brondello’s third stop as a WNBA head coach, she’ll have a true fresh start.

“Sandy is a builder. She is a teacher. She is a winner,” Tempo general manager Monica Wright Rogers said. “She leads with humility, clarity and care. Qualities that elevate an entire organization from rookies to veterans, from locker room to the front office.”

The Tempo’s coaching search started in mid-July, but took an unexpected turn once Brondello became available Sept. 23, just days after the Liberty’s title defense ended with a first-round exit in the playoffs.

New York’s decision to move on from Brondello a year after she delivered the franchise its first championship may have appeared cruel from the outside. But a growing disconnect between the front office and Brondello became increasingly more apparent as the season wore on.

“I just felt that it probably wasn’t the right fit anymore, to be quite honest,” Brondello said on a recent episode of Sue Bird’s “Bird’s Eye View” podcast. “And obviously, it was a leadership decision there. And I work best when I’m in a partnership.”

After her firing, it wasn’t a question of whether Brondello would get another WNBA job, but with whom.

As Wright Rogers noted, “You would be unwise not to try and land her.”

Brondello received job offers from Seattle, Dallas and Toronto. She ultimately felt most aligned with the Tempo.

“In the end, it was more about the partnership,” said Brondello, who shared a mutual best friend with Wright Rogers. “I knew of her, just the kind of person that she is and how she goes about her day to day and that was important for me. I thought there was a lot of alignment there and feeling comfortable in this next opportunity that I was going to take and that was the partnership, the collaboration and that we all talked about and the vision of this franchise. I think there was just, it felt right.”

Brondello gets the rare opportunity to help construct a team from start to finish, though everything is on hold — from the Toronto and Portland expansion drafts to free agency and the college draft — until the WNBA and players union agree on a new collective bargaining agreement.

Brondello’s relationships with players and overall reputation around the league should bode well for the Tempo with regard to attracting free agents. She said the roster building process “will be a collaboration.

“That’s what really excites me,” she said.

While Brondello settles into her new team, her former employer is still seeking her replacement.

The Liberty are the only team left without a head coach, though the interview process is believed to be nearing the end. Former Nets assistant coach Will Weaver and Mercury associate head coach Kristi Toliver are candidates for the job.

In the meantime, Brondello, the Liberty’s all-time winningest head coach and a two-time WNBA champion, plans to bring that success to the True North.

“The goal is to bring a championship to Toronto,” Brondello said. “That hasn’t changed. My narrative hasn’t changed. I like winning. It’s fun, but I also know it’s hard. And we’ll go to work about, you know, starting from the ground up and building the right culture and adding the right players and making sure that we continue to work together so we can put the best product out on the floor.”