Kiki Rice, Toronto’s breakout rookie, has only one gear – up-tempo

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You’ll excuse Kiki Rice if she hasn’t experienced much of Toronto quite yet. The last two months have been a whirlwind for the Tempo’s first-ever draft pick.

Rice helped lead the UCLA Bruins to the school’s first-ever women’s NCAA basketball championship in April. Then came a fast-blitz celebration tour, including appearances at Lakers and Clippers games, and on Jimmy Kimmel Live and Good Morning America, before setting off to the WNBA Draft, where Toronto’s expansion team got the player they wanted, choosing Rice sixth overall.

Within two weeks of hoisting that trophy and making women’s college basketball the toast of Los Angeles, the 22-year-old was in Toronto for training camp with her new team. Now, still in the opening month of the season, that rookie charging into the paint for spinning layups is already playing a big role with Canada’s franchise, in this fresh-faced WNBA market.

After coming off the bench in the Tempo’s first three games, Rice was thrust into a starting role following an injury to veteran WNBA point guard Julie Allemand. Rice has started Toronto’s other five games. Oh, and she did find time to throw out the first pitch at a Toronto Blue Jays game this week.

The rookie, averaging 12.6 points on the season (15.6 as a starter), is Toronto’s third-best scorer, behind backcourt veterans Marina Mabrey and Brittney Sykes. Rice is playing the second most minutes (27) and is adding 4.5 rebounds and 2.9 assists.

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She’s had to adapt fast to being a pro in Toronto’s 4-4 start, facing better players and defensive schemes.

“On court, the biggest difference from college is the pace, physicality and size. People are bigger, stronger, the game is faster, moves quicker, and adjustments are made quicker,” said Rice in an interview after practice this week. “Off court, there’s a lot more freedom than in college. Everything isn’t scripted and planned out for you.”

Rice has been a program-maker every place she has played – from high school to college.

She’s from a high-achieving family. Both parents attended Yale, her father John playing basketball there and her mother Andrea tennis. Older brother Mateo also went to Yale and played hoops.

Cousin Allan Houston is a former NBA all-star with the New York Knicks. Her aunt is diplomat Susan Rice, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and former national security advisor to Barack Obama’s administration.

As a little girl, Rice and her brother met Obama while attending pickup basketball games that their dad played with the former U.S. president.

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Rice was a decorated athlete, both a high scoring soccer player and a point guard at her private school, Sidwell Friends in Washington. She was the D.C. high-school Gatorade player of the year in both sports.

During her senior year ESPN had ranked her Sidwell team No. 1 in the country, and they finished the season 26-0. She helped the school claim its first Class AA girls’ state basketball championship. Rice also had stints with Team USA, winning gold at the FIBA Women’s U16 Americas Championship.

The highly recruited player made an unconventional decision at the time by choosing UCLA, a school that wasn’t particularly highly ranked and had no women’s basketball titles in the NCAA era. Rice was outspoken about wanting to change that.

Bruins coach Cori Close credits Rice with starting to build the powerhouse UCLA became. Once she committed, she and her parents helped Close recruit others. Star centre Lauren Betts, just drafted fourth overall by the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, was drawn to UCLA partly because she and Rice had played together for USA Basketball.

“If we’re going to trace that group back, it really did start with the leadership and the belief of Kiki Rice,” said Close. “She believed in something that we could accomplish before there was very much evidence to show for it, and she just had the work ethic to back that up.”

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The spotlight was bright on Rice in college. When the ESPN documentary series Full Court Press began in 2024, it featured three NCAA stars: Rice, South Carolina’s Kamilla Cardoso and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark. Rice became the first college athlete to sign a Name, Image and Likeness deal (NIL) with Jordan Brand. She had lots of NIL deals, from Neutrogena to Beats by Dre.

“NIL opportunities, it’s a whole new landscape for young women and men in college,” said Rice. “You have to be a businesswoman at a young age and learn to operate in these spaces. It helped me to mature.”

Close says Rice’s habits and mindset rubbed off on teammates. She improved rapidly by working on her skills with assistant coach Tasha Brown, and their close working relationship prompted others to build their own bonds with assistants and chase their improvements.

When Close watched film weekly with Rice, she always started with clips of things she was doing well, playing it over and over to help her improve the lens through which she saw herself.

Last summer, Rice and teammate Charlisse Leger-Walker collaborated with Close to design a new secondary fast break, which the team used during its championship season. It had a big tactical impact on the year.

“They broke down film, they brought me clips, we talked through what it could be,” said Close. “I just thought, ‘How lucky am I to be a coach that trusts her two point guards that much?’”

In her senior season, Rice averaged 14.9 points, 5.9 rebounds and 4.3 assists and was Big 10 tournament MVP. Her scoring efficiency, rebounding from the guard spot and playmaking made her one of the most versatile prospects on the WNBA draft board. The title run boosted her stock even more.

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Betts, Gabriela Jaquez and Rice were selected with picks Nos. 4-6 in the WNBA draft, barely a week after helping the Bruins win the title. They became the first team to have five first-round selections to the league, and the first with six players chosen in one draft.

Close wasn’t surprised to see the Tempo choose Rice. They were scouting her all year. Toronto GM Monica Wright Rogers knew of Rice years ago, since prior to her work in the WNBA, she was an assistant coach in college and recruited her as a high-school player. Wright Rogers also grew up in the D.C. area and knew many of the same people in basketball circles. Toronto really did its homework on Rice.

Since Mabrey and Sykes are drawing so much defensive attention in Toronto, Rice has been able to find seams and get downhill to the rim. Tempo coach Sandy Brondello called Rice “the ultimate pro.”

“For any player it’s hard for them to finish college – and she went all the way [to the NCAA championship] – the emotion of that, the pressure of that,” said Brondello. “Then straight into a week of getting it ready for the draft, into a training camp, a whole new country. Yet she just doesn’t take a backward step. Like, that’s amazing.”

Brondello calls Rice one of the team’s best finishers at the rim, and gives her the green light to shoot open threes. She’s impressed with her IQ and maturity.

Brondello has to kick Rice out of the gym when she works too long, just like Close did at UCLA. In her 27 WNBA seasons – first as a player then a coach – Brondello has seen many rookies hit a wall during their debut seasons. She aims to help Rice avoid that.

“She just wants to work. I’m like, ‘You need to take days off, you need to get away,’” said Brondello. “I’ve been there. I used to overtrain as a player too, myself. It took me a few years to learn that less is more.”

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