The Toronto Tempo have signed Canadian guard Kia Nurse ahead of the franchise’s inaugural WNBA season, the team announced Tuesday.

The Hamilton native gives the expansion club an experienced backcourt option with 245 career WNBA games.

The 30-year-old Nurse played the 2025 season with the Chicago Sky, appearing in 44 games (18 starts) and averaging 7.2 points while shooting 33.5 per cent from three-point range.

She has also played for New York, Phoenix and Seattle, and represented Canada at three Olympic Games.

The signing adds to an off-season that included drafting Kiki Rice sixth overall and adding veterans Brittney Sykes and Isabelle Harrison.

Toronto opens its first season May 8 at Coca-Cola Coliseum against Washington.

On Tuesday morning, Nurse said on social media platform X “I am so excited to finally be able to play on home soil and play for Canada’s first ever WNBA team.”

She said “little me in Hamilton, 20 years ago — this would have been one of my wildest dreams and I wouldn’t have thought this was even a possibility. So, this is absolutely insane and I think it’s so incredible that we are going to continue to grow basketball here in Canada together.”

On X, the Tempo announced the signing saying “Canada’s team couldn’t be complete without one of our own.  We’ve officially signed Kia Nurse.”

Nurse is one member of what might be the greatest family of athletes in Canadian history including cousin Sarah Nurse, of the Vancouver Goldeneyes of the Professional Women’s Hockey League, brother Darnell Nurse of the Edmonton Oilers of the National Hockey League, uncle Donovan McNabb, a former star quarterback in the NFL, among others.

In an interview with CBC Hamilton in March, Sarah Nurse said that she thought Kia was the best athlete in her extraordinary family. She said Kia “was probably the one that we were all trying to keep up with. I feel like she could do probably anything except hockey, so I don’t know if that weights it a certain way, but I think Kia is pretty, pretty fierce and she’s competitive.”