draft pick

Another failed summer. Another broken promise.

The most underachieving team on the Los Angeles sports landscape is embarrassingly stumbling through another season.

The Sparks stink. Again.

They’re not making the playoffs. Again.

There’s no reason to watch them even though there’s more than a month left on their schedule. Again.

For the sixth consecutive season, one of the WNBA’s legacy franchises has come apart at the seams, tattering the franchise’s three-championship history with a sordid record that mandates a clear response.

Trade your best player.

Trade Kelsey Plum.

The trade deadline is Sunday so do it quickly, and do it boldly, sending her to the sort of playoff contender who would find her worthy of young talent and draft picks.

Trade KP and do it now.

Yes, her 25-point scoring average would rank second in the league if she had not missed half the games with injuries.

Truly, she is arguably the team’s biggest attraction with the sort of Hollywood flash that overshadows even Nneka Ogwumike.

Indeed, the hard-nosed ballplayer elicits more screams and sells more tickets than any other Sparks player.

Trade her anyway. Swallow hard and make it happen. Out of a million reasons, here are just three.

First, her contract expires at the end of the season and she reportedly does not want to spend her prime years on a losing team. Can you blame her? Trade her before you lose her for nothing.

Nneka Ogwumike shoots over Chloe Bibby of the Chicago Sky during a game this month.

(Geoff Stellfox / Getty Images)

Second, at age 31, she is the team’s most valuable asset, and would command a high price among contenders looking for a shooter with a championship pedigree.

Third, this would be a powerful first move in a season-ending tank job.

You read that right. The Sparks should tank. They should tank hard. Tank, tank, tank. They should do anything it takes to have the best chance at nabbing the first pick in the 2027 draft and a chance to take USC phenom JuJu Watkins. The pursuit of Watkins, who will need to be convinced to give up her final year of college eligibility, should be the organization’s most important priority.

Anything for JuJu, and that includes trading Plum. While they’re at it, could they also please dump the massively disappointing Ariel Atkins and Erica Wheeler? Those two busts were part of the Sparks’ ill-conceived attempt last offseason to build a veteran team that could immediately compete.

It didn’t work, and now the Sparks have only four players who should be welcomed back next year — Cameron Brink, Rae Burrell, Dearica Hamby and Ogwumike.

Without Plum, Brink can have more space to work inside. Without Plum, Burrell can score 25 points a game. It’s a tank, but it’s not necessarily an ugly tank.

The front office should also be cleansed. Former general manager Raegan Pebley is already gone, meaning coach Lynne Roberts is next, probably fired the day after the season ends.

Cameron Brink is pressured by Indiana Fever guard Lexie Hull during a game in May.

(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)

Their replacements might be anonymous shadow dwellers, but that’s OK. The Sparks need to not hire college wonders — no Cori Close — and enlist some good old-fashioned WNBA veteran thinkers and evaluators and leaders.

The Sparks basically need to start from scratch, and it starts with a major move sometime in the next five days.

Trade KP.

Please?

“We pushed in a lot of chips this year, and we had good reason to do that, but the reality is it hasn’t gone as we’d hoped or expected,” said Farhan Zaidi, special advisor to Sparks’ owner Mark Walter. “Now we have to be open for anything. Everything has to be on the table for us. We have to take a long-term perspective rather than focusing on the rest of the season.”

In other words, the trade light is lit!

Zaidi wouldn’t comment on specific players or club personnel, only to note that the Sparks cannot grow as constituted.

“We have to be realistic where we are,” he said. “We don’t want to be that team stuck in the middle.”

In other words, keeping Plum might give them a few more wins, but to what end? They contend for the final playoff berth only to fall short? And if they make it, how long would they last against a powerhouse like Minnesota? For a big-market, win-now team like the Sparks, mediocrity is a death knell.

Zaidi trusts that Sparks fans will understand, and I agree.

Their growing fan base is as smart as they are passionate. They understand that to break this losing spell, the Sparks will have to break with franchise tradition and basically give up on this season to build hope for the next.

My daughter and fellow season-ticket holder MC was quick to react when I told her I was going to advocate trading Plum.

The Sparks should trade Kelsey Plum before she walks away as a free agent.

(Aryanna Frank / Getty Images)

“Write it,” she said. “I want hope.”

Zaidi thinks other fans will agree.

“We have very smart fans, I don’t want to patronize them as to where we are,” he said. ”Our dedicated fans will understand if we have to take a step back to get to that championship level. I can step back if I feel like we’re building something.”

Zaidi noted, “I think it can happen quickly.”

He’s right. In a league in which a team like Golden State can contend for a title in only its second season, in a space where both of this year’s expansion teams — Toronto and Portland — can have better records than the Sparks, rebuilding doesn’t take much.

If the Sparks get some young talent and draft picks for Plum, then sign a top free agent by using the construction of their new practice facility as a selling point… who knows?

The Sparks need to do whatever it takes to become the Sparks again.

Hello, hope.

Goodbye, KP.

The Lakers are trading center Deandre Ayton to the Washington Wizards for guard Jaden Hardy and two second-round draft picks, in 2031 and 2032, people not authorized to speak publicly confirmed to The Times on Friday.

Ayton had returned to the Lakers after an up-and-down first season with the team, picking up his player option for $8.1 million last Sunday. But he became expendable once the Lakers agreed to acquire 24-year-old center Walker Kessler from the Utah Jazz and sign him to a four-year, $130-million contract.

The Ayton trade leaves the Lakers in the market for a backup center. Several veterans including Jonas Valanciunas and Kevon Looney still are available.

The Lakers acquired Ayton before last season after the Portland Trail Blazers bought out his contract, signing him to a two-year, $16-million deal. He averaged career lows of 12.5 points and 8.0 rebounds last season, but shot 67.1% from the field while starting 72 games, both career highs.

The Wizards believe the 7-foot Ayton will be a good fit alongside centers Anthony Davis and Alex Sarr.

The 6-3 Hardy, who spent three-plus seasons with the Dallas Mavericks before being traded to Washington in February, averaged 9.2 points, 1.5 rebounds and 1.0 assists while shooting 42.4% from the field and 39.7% from three-point range last season.

MIAMI — Giannis Antetokounmpo wants more championships. So do the Miami Heat.

And the Heat finally have another superstar.

Ending a marathon watch for the next great Miami get, the Heat landed Antetokounmpo — a two-time NBA MVP and 10-time All-Star — from the Milwaukee Bucks on Monday night in exchange for a massive haul of players and draft picks.

The terms, according to a person who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the move has yet to receive the required league approval: Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis are heading to Miami for Wisconsin native Tyler Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kel’el Ware and Kasparas Jakucionis. Milwaukee also gets at least four picks, including the No. 13 selection that will be made in Tuesday night’s NBA draft.

It ends a wild back-and-forth in the final days of the saga, with the Bucks considering offers from both Miami and Boston for Antetokounmpo — who led Milwaukee to the 2021 NBA title, was on the NBA’s 75th anniversary list of its greatest players ever, is a nine-time All-NBA selection and is coming off an injury-shortened season where he averaged 27.6 points per game.

There has been no secret that this is what Miami has sought, because this is what Miami usually seeks. The Heat pulled off similar moves by landing Shaquille O’Neal in 2004 (helping lead to the 2006 NBA title) and by getting LeBron James and Chris Bosh to play alongside Dwyane Wade in 2010 (leading to four NBA Finals runs in four seasons together, along with the 2012 and 2013 NBA titles).

Now, it’s Antetokounmpo’s turn. At 31, the Heat clearly believe he still has many good years left — and it’s generally presumed that by making this deal they’ll give the Greek superstar a massive extension later this year.

He was a perennial MVP candidate in Milwaukee, getting votes for that award in nine consecutive seasons before 2025-26, when too many missed games left him ineligible.

He has averaged 24.1 points and 9.9 rebounds per game in his career, with 10 consecutive seasons of averaging at least 22.9 points — with three years in there of averaging more than 30 points per game.

Only seven current players have more points in their careers than Antetokounmpo, who has totaled 21,531 to this point.

Antetokounmpo had been mentioned in trade talks countless times in recent years, with the Bucks always insisting — with words and actions — that they had no interest in trading their best player and one of the best players in the history of their franchise.

But this time, it seemed different.

The Bucks, who fired Doc Rivers as coach after the season, don’t have a roster that would be considered a championship contender. By trading Antetokounmpo, they can essentially start over with four players (and the Heat were high on all of them) along with draft capital.

“I just think before the draft is a natural time, right, because if Giannis does play somewhere else we’re going to get a lot of assets. … You’ve got to get it right,” Bucks co-owner Jimmy Haslam said in May, when the team introduced new coach Taylor Jenkins — who was told that Antetokounmpo may or may not be with the franchise when next season starts.

Jenkins and the rest of the NBA now has the answer: Antetokounmpo won’t be there.

Antetokounmpo had spoken highly of Miami many times over the years, even when the Heat and Bucks were going head-to-head in the playoffs. He also shares an agent with Heat star center Bam Adebayo, who was the only player that Miami clearly was not willing to part with in order to make this deal happen.

“They’re going to play tough and they’re not going to stop playing,” Antetokounmpo said after Milwaukee played Miami on March 12. “That’s the Miami Heat culture.”

Little did anyone know that night that those words were coming after what would be the next-to-last game for Antetokounmpo in a Bucks uniform. He played three nights later against Indiana, then was held out of Milwaukee’s final 15 games of the season.

The Bucks said that was for injury-related reasons. Antetokounmpo said he wanted to play.

He had some bouts with injury this past season: Antetokounmpo missed four games in late November with a left adductor strain and sat out eight games in December with a right calf strain, then he injured the right calf again in January.

He landed awkwardly on a dunk in that March 15 victory over Indiana and didn’t play again because of what team officials had labeled as a left knee hyperextension and bone bruise. Antetokounmpo said the last few weeks of the season that he was healthy and wanted to play, a dispute that resulted in an investigation by the league office.

Reynolds writes for the Associated Press.