The Sparks’ defensive struggles continued on Wednesday during a 99-83 loss to the first-place Minnesota Lynx at Crypto.com Arena.
The Sparks (7-7) had trouble containing Lynx rookie Olivia Miles, who set a WNBA rookie record with 24 first-half points and finished with a career-high 31. Miles helped the Lynx (11-3) make a strong push for a spot in the Commissioner’s Cup championship, but the Las Vegas Aces snatched the final spot against the New York Liberty with a victory over Phoenix on Wednesday night.
Sparks guard Kelsey Plum, the WNBA’s leading scorer, missed the game with a lower leg injury. The team also played without forward Cameron Brink, who sprained her ankle on Monday.
Rae Burrell led the Sparks in scoring with 19 points, while Jihyun Park added 13 off the bench. Dearica Hamby was limited to 12 points and nine rebounds, while Nneka Ogwumike added 10 points and eight boards.
“I thought [Jihyun] was a bright spot. She is really smart out there and knows what she is doing,” Sparks coach Lynne Roberts said. “That’s what you need to do when you get those moments — you take advantage of it, and that’s what she did.”
With Plum and Brink out, Roberts said pregame that it would take a team effort to beat Minnesota, but it was a tough climb for four quarters.
The Sparks were nearly perfect in the first quarter before committing their first turnover with under five minutes to play. The turnover swung the momentum in Minnesota’s favor.
The Lynx erased the Sparks’ 7-3 lead — fueled by quick starts from Burrell and Hamby. Burrell scored 10 points by being aggressive in all areas and Hamby scored 10 of her 12 points in the first half.
Miles took a few minutes to get her feet wet. Once her shots started to fall, the Sparks struggled to contain her.
“She is good,” Roberts said about Miles’ performance. “She is talented. Like I said pregame, she is super skilled, and we were trying to mix things up. We didn’t execute exactly how we’d hoped to all the time, but you just have to tip your cap to her. She is a great player with a lot of skill.”
Lynx took their first lead with a jumper from Natasha Howard with 5:04 left in the first quarter. The lead changed frequently early, but the Lynx opened the second quarter with a 27-21 advantage.
The Sparks’ scoring trouble flared up in the second quarter just as Miles got hot. The Sparks were outscored 29-18 during the quarter and entered halftime down 52-37.
After trailing by as many as 20 points in the third quarter, the Sparks cut the margin to 10. Erica Wheeler sank two free throws to cut the deficit to 61-51 with 4:32 remaining in the third quarter.
The Sparks held Miles to five points during the third quarter, but the Lynx got 20 points from Nia Coffey and 15 points from Howard.
Fouls and turnovers crushed the Sparks’ rally. After Minnesota built a big lead, both teams cleared their benches late in the fourth quarter.
The Sparks haven’t beaten the Lynx at home since Aug. 21, 2018. L.A. is riding a two-game losing streak and will face Eastern Conference leader New York Liberty on Sunday at Crypto.com Arena. The game will feature a celebration of the WNBA’s 30th anniversary.
“We are going through adversity right now,” Roberts said. “We just got to get healthy.”
SEATTLE — Nneka Ogwumike scored a season-high 24 points against her former team, Kelsey Plum added 19 points and 11 assists, and the Sparks beat the Seattle Storm 88-83 on Wednesday night.
Ogwumike, who spent the last two seasons in Seattle, also grabbed nine rebounds to move into fourth on the WNBA career list, passing Rebekkah Brunson.
Cameron Brink added 15 points off the bench and Dearica Hamby grabbed 10 rebounds for the Sparks (6-6) in the Commissioner’s Cup game.
Natisha Hiedeman scored 16 points for Seattle (3-11), which has lost seven straight games. Dominique Malonga scored 15, Flau’jae Johnson added 14, Awa Fam had 12 and Jordan Horston 11 as all five Seattle starters scored in double figures.
Chance Gray made three free throws with 8:27 left in the fourth quarter to give the Sparks a lead, 72-70, they would not relinquish.
The Sparks were called for a defensive foul on a drive by Horston with 28.9 seconds left in the fourth, but it was overturned after a coach’s review. The Sparks took possession, leading 86-83, but Plum missed a long jumper and Seattle called a timeout with 12.1 left.
Seattle struggled to get off a quick shot and settled for a long three-pointer by Hiedeman that hit off the rim. Plum sealed it by making two free throws with 1.6 seconds left.
The quarter mark of a season isn’t necessarily a make-or-break point, but for the Sparks, it was starting to feel like it was close to it.
An 89-72 win over the expansion Portland Fire on Sunday to close a 1-2 homestand felt more necessary than the Sparks might have wanted to admit. But after struggling on the road before losing consecutive games at home against Las Vegas and Dallas amid a three-game losing streak, the Sparks needed something to go right.
Especially defensively, where the Sparks had seemingly been getting worse. They had their best defensive game of the season Sunday, holding Portland to 36% shooting — the second-lowest mark against them this season.
Kelsey Plum finished with 16 points and six assists and Nneka Ogwumike had a double-double with 20 points and 17 rebounds. Dearica Hamby had 22 points with 12 rebounds, a solid response for the veteran forward following her struggles in recent games.
Before the game, coach Lynne Roberts admitted that she would consider benching some players if things didn’t improve.
“That’s the stage we’re at,” she said. “So that’s where we’re at. So stay tuned.”
The Sparks (5-6) stuck with their usual rotation and held the Fire to 72 points, the fewest they’ve allowed in a game this season.
Plum didn’t register a shot attempt until early in the third quarter when she hit a mid-range jumper to go ahead 45-43. The Fire defense smothered her, and while Erica Wheeler and Ogwumike made some shots early, the Sparks mostly didn’t make Portland (6-7) pay for doubling up their star.
The Sparks went on an 8-0 run in the first quarter while the Fire struggled to make shots around the rim.
But the Sparks’ offense went cold in the second quarter, allowing Portland to come back to lead by two at halftime. Portland also dominated on the boards to get extra possessions.
The Sparks adjusted to open the third quarter with six consecutive points. Portland struggled to hold on to the ball and turned it over nine times in the third quarter, allowing the Sparks to outscore them 23-12.
Portland couldn’t recover and the Sparks capitalized on turnovers to pull ahead by as much as 18.
The Sparks will play at the Seattle Storm (3-9) next on Wednesday.
While Kelsey Plum was out with an ankle injury for the past week, Sparks coach Lynne Roberts called her the “head of the snake” of the team’s offense.
Plum, who entered the night leading the WNBA in scoring, netted 27 points but couldn’t save the Sparks from a fourth-quarter collapse and a 104-96 loss to the Dallas Wings at Crypto.com Arena on Friday night.
The Sparks’ offense looked better, but it had no answers for the three-headed attack of Arike Ogunbowale, Paige Bueckers and Jessica Shepherd, who spearheaded the Wings’ 63% shooting effort in the fourth quarter to seal the win.
The Sparks have lost three consecutive games for the first time since last June. They lost to Connecticut on May 30 before a poor offensive outing against Las Vegas on Tuesday. With Plum, they eclipsed their 69-point total from that game by midway through the third quarter Friday.
But Dallas’ offense was too much for the WNBA’s worst defense.
The Sparks led by as much as nine in the second quarter but surrendered the lead late in the quarter as the Wings shot 55% to cut the lead to one by halftime.
The Sparks led 78-77 going into the fourth after a back-and-forth third quarter, but Dallas went on a 15-5 run to lead by eight. It was the only cold quarter for the Sparks, who scored just 18 points, with more than half of their offense coming from Plum.
It was a two-point game with under two minutes to play when Ogunbowale collected a rebound off her own shot to give the Wings a two-possession lead before Plum missed a three-pointer and a free throw.
Nneka Ogwumike notched a double-double with 13 points and 10 rebounds while Ariel Atkins scored 16 points.
Ogunbowale scored a game-high 30 points while Bueckers posted a career-high 14 assists and Shepherd had 22 points and 15 rebounds.
Wings guard Odyssey Sims left the court in a wheelchair in the second quarter after she twisted her left ankle coming down from a rebound attempt; she didn’t return. In the fourth, Aziaha James had to be carried off by her teammates after she got hit hard by an Ogwumike screen.
The Sparks will host the expansion Portland Fire (6-6) on Sunday, who lost a tight game against Phoenix on Friday night.
Sparks guard Kelsey Plum should be set to return to action on Friday against the Dallas Wings.
Plum, who leads the WNBA in scoring, missed the last three games with a sprained ankle injury she sustained in practice. She practiced in full on Thursday, and head coach Lynne Roberts seemed optimistic that she would play.
“I think so,” Roberts said when asked if Plum would play. “She looks good. Hopefully she can play.”
Plum led the Sparks to a 101-95 win in Las Vegas on May 23 and has been one of the best shooters in the league.
She said she feels ready to play on Friday.
“I hated it,” she said of watching from the bench. “I have been just rehabbing like a maniac, sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber, red lighting my way back.”
In her absence, the Sparks went 1-2 and averaged 83 points, including their worst offensive game of the season on Tuesday in a loss to the Aces.
“She’s kind of the engine that makes everything go,” Roberts said on Thursday. “We’ve sputtered a little bit offensively.”
Before this injury, Plum had missed only four games in her nine-year career because of injury.
The Sparks are 4-5 after starting the season with high hopes to make a return to the postseason.
Coming off a dreadful loss in Connecticut to the worst team in the WNBA, the Sparks needed a strong response.
In their first home game after the road trip, that did not happen until far too late.
The Sparks were always just out of reach in their 79-69 loss to the Las Vegas Aces on Tuesday night, despite Rae Burrell’s career-high 22 points and a late comeback bid. It was the fewest they have scored in a game since Aug. 9 of last season when they scored 59 points.
Last time the Sparks faced the Aces on May 23, they went into Las Vegas and scored 29 points in the fourth quarter for a tremendous road win, powered by Kelsey Plum.
But Plum, who leads the WNBA with 26.8 points per game, is still out with a right ankle sprain, and the Sparks (4-5) offense suffered for it. Other than Burrell’s scoring, the rest of the Sparks offense combined to shoot 12-for-51.
They also entered the night with the league’s worst defense. It’s always going to be difficult to stop A’ja Wilson (25 points), but the Sparks had few answers for Jackie Young (16 points, nine assists) who spaced out the Aces (6-3) offense.
It still was far from their worst defensive showing of the season, and mostly they couldn’t claw their way back with a paltry 30.8% from the field. In fact, the Aces scored just 15 points in the fourth, giving the Sparks a window to come back, but they shot 29.4% in the frame.
The Sparks fell into a 15-point hole in the second after going nearly three minutes without scoring. Burrell scored seven of her points in that frame, though, to ignite a 20-point quarter and the Sparks trailed 37-30 at the half.
But the Aces quickly earned a 13-point lead early in the third and stayed up double digits until near the end of the fourth when Burrell made it a seven-point game.
Plum missed her fourth consecutive game since injuring her right ankle in practice. She participated in shootaround Tuesday even after being ruled out, and head coach Lynne Roberts said she was day-to-day.
But the Aces were also shorthanded, without Dana Evans, Jewel Loyd and Chennedy Carter, who is second on the Aces in scoring despite coming off the bench. That forced the Aces to run some sets with Wilson at small forward and a much-larger front court in front of her before NaLyssa Smith ran into foul trouble.
The Sparks forwards struggled with that, with Dearica Hamby, Nneka Ogwumike and Cameron Brink combining to shoot six-for-27, including an 0-for-7 night from Hamby.
The Sparks next host Dallas (6-3) on Friday night.
The Sparks were determined to end a season-opening four-game homestand with their second straight win against Toronto. Instead, the expansion Tempo avenged a four-point defeat two days earlier with a 106-96 victory Sunday afternoon at Crypto.com Arena.
Guard Kelsey Plum, who started the day tied for the WNBA lead in scoring at 26.3 points per game, paced the Sparks with 28, Dearica Hamby scored 21 and Nneka Ogwumike added 17 points and seven rebounds.
Trailing by 13 at one point in the fourth quarter, the Sparks cut the deficit to six on Plum’s two free throws with 4:27 left, but they got no closer. The Sparks fell to 1-3 (tied with Seattle for last place in the Western Conference) while Toronto improved to 2-2.
“We’re four games in so it would be immature to panic,” coach Lynne Roberts said. “It’s a long season but we do need to have urgency out there.”
The Tempo outscored the Sparks 9-3 in the last three minutes of the first quarter to take a 27-21 lead and widened the gap to 14 points on Laura Juskaite’s jumper with 4:28 left in the second. A Hamby three-point shot at the halftime buzzer rimmed out and the Sparks headed to the locker room down 49-40.
Rae Burrell committed her fifth personal with 4:33 left in the third and Kia Nurse made both free throws to give the Tempo their largest lead, 65-49. The margin grew to 17 before the Sparks closed the quarter with a 13-8 run.
After a 27-point performance in the first game, Brittney Sykes had 14 points by halftime in the rematch and finished with a career-high 38. Guard Kiki Rice, who led UCLA to the national championship in early April, added 19.
Toronto won the game at the foul line, making 39 of 42 attempts (92.9%) compared to 23 of 30 for the Sparks, who held a 26-25 edge in rebounding, a 48-38 advantage in points in the paint and outscored the visitors 20-12 on second-chance points.
“That was ugly… hard to watch,” Roberts said of the free throw discrepancy. “Seventy-two [total] free throws? I get it, they’re trying to clean it up but it’s painful. I’m not saying we weren’t fouling just that it’s challenging.”
The Sparks are still missing offseason acquisition Ariel Atkins (concussion protocol) and forward Sania Feagin has been out with a left leg strain since Wednesday. Atkins, a two-time All-Star, was traded from Chicago for Rickea Jackson on April 12.
“We’re going to have to have resilience,” said Plum, who had 27 points, nine assists and three steals in Friday’s win. “This league is tough. You’re going to get punched but you have to take it and punch back.”
Guard Erica Wheeler made her second start, contributing four points and seven assists and Hamby grabbed a game-high nine rebounds.
“It felt good… my teammates made it an easy transition,” said guard Kate Martin, who joined the Sparks one week prior after being cut by Golden State and got her first points with her new team, netting 11 in 18 minutes of action. “I don’t care how many points I score, I just want to win.”
Kelsey Plum drives to the basket during the game against Toronto on Sunday.
(Juan Ocampo / Getty Images)
In their first year under Roberts the Sparks finished 21-23 last season — a 13-game improvement from 2024 — but they missed the playoffs for a fifth straight time, marking the longest postseason drought in franchise history. Plum averaged 19.5 points and 5.7 assists per game.
“The beauty of this is that it’s a process,” Roberts added. “We opened up with four games at home and we didn’t take care of business. We can feel sorry for ourselves or we can fix it.”
The Sparks begin a four-game trip Thursday in Phoenix, then travel to Las Vegas on May 23, Washington on May 29 and Connecticut on May 30 before returning home to host Las Vegas on June 2.
The Sparks are finally in the win column, but the outcome was in doubt late Friday night.
Behind double-digit scoring from all five starters, the Sparks had by far their best offensive showing of the season, shooting 63.8% during a 99-95 win over the expansion Toronto Tempo.
The Tempo didn’t make things easy, cutting the deficit to two points late and later trailing by just three with 31 seconds remaining and possession of the ball. Marina Mabrey missed a three-point attempt before late Tempo fouls gave the Sparks enough of a cushion to win.
Kelsey Plum nearly claimed a double-double with 27 points and nine assists, while Dearica Hamby had 19 points with seven rebounds and Nneka Ogwumike scored 20 points.
Erica Wheeler, who started in place of Ariel Atkins (concussion), scored 10 points with seven assists and was a plus-16 as the primary ball handler after starting the season two for 16 from the field. That freed up Plum to be in position to score, setting up a much more efficient Sparks offense.
Toronto was shorthanded in the frontcourt without starting center Temi Fagbenle (right shoulder), and the Sparks trio of bigs had a field day with 54 points in the paint.
The Sparks came out firing on Friday, opening with a 17-2 run.
The Tempo went on a 10-0 burst heading into the second quarter but the Sparks countered to maintain momentum and led 46-38 at halftime.
A Wheeler three-pointer early in the third quarter gave the Sparks a 20-point lead. The Tempo cut it to three midway through the fourth while Brittany Sykes (27 points, seven assists) sparked Toronto’s rally. The Tempo put up more shots than the Sparks, 70-58, largely because of a 10-2 offensive-rebounding gap.
Cameron Brink’s 10 points were the only ones provided by the Sparks’ bench, while the Tempo got 42 points from reserves.
Toronto was coming off its first win in franchise history on Wednesday when it defeated Seattle but struggled against a more complete offensive team in the Sparks.
In her return to Los Angeles after winning a national championship with UCLA this spring, Tempo rookie Kiki Rice netted 11 points.
Kate Martin made her Sparks debut as a developmental player with Atkins and Sania Feagin (lower left leg) unavailable and picked up one rebound in six minutes.
The Sparks will face Toronto again on Sunday at Crypto.com Arena.
To be the best, you have to beat the best, and the Sparks aren’t quite there.
In their season opener, the Sparks couldn’t build momentum against defending champion Las Vegas and fell 105-78 behind a remarkably efficient shooting day from the Aces.
Las Vegas shot 63% from the floor and the Sparks had few answers. Nneka Ogwumike had 19 points and 10 rebounds in her return to the Sparks, and Kelsey Plum opened her campaign with 27 points. Reigning WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson led the Aces with 19 points and Jackie Young picked up 20 points and nine assists. Chennedy Carter had 22 points in her first WNBA game since 2024.
Plum scored 11 of her points in the fourth quarter, but by then the Aces had opened a 20-plus point lead.
The Aces were coming off a 33-point blowout opening day loss to Phoenix on Saturday but showed no sign of fatigue.
Las Vegas (1-1) pounded the paint early with 26 points in the first half and 14 free throws to seven from the Sparks (0-1). They also shot 68.8% in the opening quarter to lead 29-14.
But the Sparks’ offense also seemed a bit out of sorts, with nine turnovers in the opening half that the Aces turned into 10 points. Las Vegas opened the second quarter on an 18-5 run.
The Sparks narrowed the deficit to one by halftime following an Ogwumike three-pointer and backhand layup late in the second. But mostly, the Sparks’ defense activated, forcing 10 turnovers, led by two steals apiece from Ariel Atkins and Erica Wheeler to fuel the comeback.
The Aces expanded their lead back to nine following a pair of turnovers from Atkins and Plum.
Last season, the Sparks had the worst defense in the WNBA, giving up 88.2 points per game. Defensive woes haunted them once more with 33 points allowed on 73.7% shooting in the third quarter, allowing the Aces to pull away.
Even with 15 offensive rebounds to the Aces’ six, the Sparks’ offense wasn’t efficient enough to compete. The Sparks also only got seven from the bench, with Wheeler shooting one for 11 in 20 minutes.
On a rare off day in Los Angeles, Sparks guard Kelsey Plum settles into a quieter rhythm. She brings a book to a dog park near her home, finds a spot, and reads. But even here, the stillness is partial at best. Her mind keeps working, circling the same question that has followed her through every stage of her career. What does greatness actually require?
Right now, Plum is reading “The Talent Code,” a book that digs into the tension between nature and nurture. It’s not exactly light reading for a day off, but then again, she isn’t really wired for off days.
“Talent,” she says, “takes countless hours of practice. Sure, you have some natural ability, but you have to train it. You look at like a Russian tennis player, why are they good? Is it random? The similarity with greatness is practice.”
That idea, practice as the great equalizer, shapes how Plum sees her career now, in a moment that demands more from her than ever before.
Sparks guard Kelsey Plum moved to L.A. because she wanted to play a bigger role than she did on the Las Vegas Aces title-winning teams.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
In the week before the WNBA season, she’s no longer in the calm of the park but inside the controlled chaos of media day at El Camino College’s gym. Between photo shoots, she sits on a green room couch in a makeshift makeup area, the morning already filled with obligations: a news conference, cameras, questions about what comes next. Beside her earlier was Ariel Atkins, one of the veterans she helped bring to Los Angeles, a signal that this next chapter is meant to be different.
“Have you ever driven a really expensive car, but didn’t have good insurance?” Plum asked. “When you have great coverage, you can relax a little bit. That’s what it feels like now, there’s so many people paddling in the boat with me.”
That sense of shared momentum didn’t come immediately. Not long ago, there was doubt.
Until a few weeks ago, Plum wasn’t entirely sure she had made the right decision to join the Sparks. After being traded from the Aces in 2025, she knew she wanted more responsibility, more ownership and the chance to be the face of a team. But belief in a vision is one thing; living through the roughest stretches of the transformation is another.
The Sparks went 21-23 last season, finishing two wins short of reaching the postseason. There were flashes, particularly late in the year when Cameron Brink, the No. 2 overall pick in 2024, returned from injury. Still, the result was familiar in L.A.: another year without a playoff berth.
For a player like Plum, that kind of outcome lingers.
Sparks guard Kelsey Plum feared she might have made a mistakes during some difficult moments early in her tenure in L.A., but free agents’ decision to join her boosted her confidence.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
“I don’t think that last year I realized how big of a decision I made,” she said. “Obviously there’s a you don’t understand the gravity of it till you’re in it. I think when Nneka [Ogwumike] signed this year, I was like, ‘OK, I’m not crazy. They’re seeing the vision I am seeing.’”
That validation mattered. It reframed the risk as something shared.
The Sparks leaned into the direction Plum believed in during the offseason. Some of that came directly from her influence and some of it came from the example she set.
“KP came here because she wanted to test herself on how she impacts winning,” said Sparks general manager Raegan Pebley. “And there’s a lot of things that go into impacting winning. It’s on the [score]board, but it’s also, are you a leader? Can you influence other people to come along with you? And she’s been able to do that. She’s been a great, great person to partner with.”
Plum understands that distinction well. She’s been on championship teams before with back-to-back titles in Las Vegas in 2022 and 2023, but this is different. In Los Angeles, she’s helping define what the organization will become.
The franchise hasn’t reached the postseason since 2020, the longest active drought in the WNBA. For a team in a major market, the absence has been noticeable, even as individual pieces hinted at potential.
Plum, in her first season away from the franchise that drafted her No. 1 overall in 2017 after her record-setting run at Washington, produced immediately: 19.5 points and 5.7 assists per game. But numbers alone weren’t the point.
“I felt like I can be the connector,” she said. “When you’re part of a championship culture, you get to see what goes into it. And it’s way more than just basketball. It’s like the business, the operations of it all. They all work together. Obviously, what Mark Davis has done is tremendous in Las Vegas, and really investing in that team. So, yeah, coming here definitely, I learned a lot more than basketball, right? About what goes into building a championship team, a roster, what goes into investing in players and making it feel like a destination where players are like, ‘Ooh, I want to go play there.’”
Sparks guard Kelsey Plum accepted a lower salary so that the team could pursue key free agents capable of helping win a championship.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
That perspective shaped her decisions this offseason in tangible ways. Despite being eligible for a $1.4 million supermax contract after her core designation, Plum chose to sign at a lower number, giving the Sparks flexibility to build around her.
They used that space to add Ogwumike and Erica Wheeler, while still leaving $1,468,650 in cap space for a potential in-season move. They also traded for Atkins from Chicago, parting with 2024 first-round pick Rickea Jackson to ease the pressure in the backcourt.
“I want to really help transform an organization,” Plum said. “As a player, you don’t really know how good you are, or how much you can handle, capacity wise, until put in a situation that’s maybe a little over your head.”
Belief, in this case, became contagious. Plum helped recruit Wheeler. Ogwumike, already familiar with the franchise, pointed to broader changes as part of her decision to return.
With key pieces in play, Sparks guard Kelsey Plum said the team must embrace high expectations. “We’re no longer the cute, young tadpole team,” she said. “We have to win.”
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
“The last couple years have strategically been very, very focused with our ownership and improving the player experience,” Pebley said. “We’ve got a practice facility that is being built. … Players are experiencing a much more consistent and high level, just player experience. And I think they can now look at their peers eye to eye and say, ‘This is where you need to be. you’re going to be treated really well here.’”
All of it builds toward a simple, unavoidable truth: this version of the Sparks can’t afford to linger in potential.
Plum’s legacy in Los Angeles will hinge on whether this reset becomes a turning point or just another chapter in a long rebuild. The expectations have shifted, internally and externally.
“Last year was tough,” Plum said. “We were right there at the end. But I think this year is different. Obviously, with all the free agency acquisitions, this is very exciting. We’re no longer the cute, young tadpole team. We have to win.”
Teams have had a little more than a week to prepare their training camp rosters between free agency, the league’s primary draft and an expansion draft. The Sparks have one of the more notable roster transformations in the league, adding Nneka Ogwumike, Erica Wheeler and Ariel Atkins.
On Sunday at the start of training camp in San Diego, Wheeler said Sparks returning guard Kelsey Plum sold her on the vision of the organization, and Ogwumike’s signing cemented it.
“KP played a big role in having me here,” she said, describing a lunch last season when Plum told Wheeler she wanted her to sign with the Sparks. “I think Nneka just was like the tip of the iceberg, like it was a no brainer. Once Nneka decides she wants to come here, because, as you know, president [of the WNBPA], life is always easier around her.
“We want to win the championship.”
Ogwumike’s return to Los Angeles was just one indicator that the Sparks are, as Wheeler put it, “going for gold.”
This year’s Sparks roster looks a lot more intentional than a couple of years ago. General manager Raegan Pebley said Atkins’ addition helps establish a deeper offense, while Rae Burrell playing at the three gives them more versatility.
There are still question marks. They don’t have a ton of ball-handling depth or much true-center play after Cameron Brink.
But Ogwumike has seen the changes internally and from afar, and she thinks the Sparks are ready to compete now.
“I didn’t actually want to leave, but I felt like I needed to, considering the growth that we wanted to see further in the organization, and I really wanted to come back,” she said. “… The timeline of a lot of things [in the offseason] accelerated, me narrowing down certain organizations, but L.A. was in the mix not because, not just because of the time that I’ve had here, but because of the amazing progress that I’ve seen in just the two years in my absence.”
Ogwumike said part of that was the investment in a practice facility, set to debut in 2027, and that the front office, led by Pebley, had a plan to build a winning team.
But the most important thing in bringing in the veteran trio was that the Sparks had a plan on the court, too.
“It’s really exciting when you can be in a place where everybody has the main thing being the main thing,” Atkins said. “And that’s not to say it wasn’t like that in the past, but it’s different when you have older players and vets around you that have done it before, because the way that they walk in, the way that they talk, there’s no uncertainty there, right? It’s like, this is how we need to get through, this is what we need to do, get it done so it really just be on us.”
Wheeler has only played in the WNBA postseason a handful of times between Indiana and Seattle and at 36 years old, she joined the Sparks led by coach Lynne Roberts with the intention of playing for a winner.
“I tell people all the time, I’m a businesswoman,” she said. “I have money. … So money don’t move me, [there] was a lot more money out there for me to go after. But I felt like Lynne is building a championship rock, and I want to be a part of that.”
Atkins was traded from Chicago for Rickea Jackson, a controversial move that shipped one of the best young players in the game away from the Sparks. On draft night, Pebley said the move helped them win games now and she reiterated that on Sunday.
“We were really aware of is that we were missing another counter punch with KP, she needed some support in terms of somebody that can take some pressure off of her, to have to score it, or to have to create for someone else to score it, that was a big reason of why Ariel, we feel, is a great fit,” she said. “And then Erica Wheeler is just a winner, and she’s going to bring some toughness and leadership there. So I think with those three at the one-two spot, we’re super excited about that.”
Atkins adds a defensive layer alongside Ogwumike for a team that was dead last in the WNBA in defensive points per game last season, and that’s one of those intentional, win-now kind of moves that has everyone in the organization excited.
The Sparks finished just two games out of a playoff spot last season. This year, expectations are far more than just finishing as a playoff team, and that messaging brought in one of the most cohesive rosters in the WNBA.
“I always say that the killer combination is investment and engagement, and so I’m seeing both at very high levels, and it permeates every aspect of the organization,” Ogwumike said. “Whether it’s basketball ops, front office, player experience, practice facility, it’s just something that I’ve always believed was our standard, and not only have we matched what our expectations were, but we’re now exceeding it in a timeline that I think is much faster than I ever expected.”
