lackluster

The Sparks’ ownership made a major shift in direction on Sunday, firing general manager Raegan Pebley amid a lackluster season that has the team just below the WNBA playoff cutoff line and far from the title-contending form Pebley promised.

Assistant general managers Zach Knowlton and Nate Nielsen will split interim GM duties, the team announced.

“We are grateful to Raegan for her leadership and commitment to the Los Angeles Sparks and women’s basketball,” Sparks managing partner and governor Eric Holoman said in a statement. “Her work on the Sparks roster and player experience will have a lasting positive impact on our organization. We sincerely thank her for all she has invested in the Sparks and wish her success in her next chapter.”

The Sparks (10-11) sit in ninth place in the WNBA standings, one removed from the last playoff spot. The team is coming off back-to-back wins over the Chicago Sky and Indiana Fever, which followed a three-game losing streak.

“There is a united vision from ownership to leadership, and then I think it’s discipline,” Pebley told The Times in an interview before Friday’s game. “I think you can make a lot of mistakes if you use recency bias, and if you become really reactionary. We want to respond to the things that we’re seeing that we want to grow in, but we don’t want to just demonstrate a lack of discipline and quickly react that way.”

The Sparks have won three WNBA titles, the most recent in 2016, but the franchise has not made the playoffs since 2020.

Leading scorer Kelsey Plum has missed two long stretches because of injuries, but the biggest headache for the team for much of the season has been its poor defense.

Under Pebley’s direction, the Sparks hired coach Lynne Roberts and acquired Plum and Nneka Ogwumike, a former most valuable player with the team. Roberts, however, had been the coach at the University of Utah and had no WNBA experience. Despite the team’s struggles, Pebley gave Roberts a vote of confidence on Friday.

Sparks general manager Raegan Pebley, left, speaks during a news conference introducing new guard Kelsey Plum, center. They are joined by Sparks coach Lynne Roberts.

(Ringo Chiu/For The Los Angeles Times)

“She has been all we were looking for and more,” Pebley said. “We wanted someone who had that emotional regulation; she stays neutral. I think the days of a tyrant head coach are over.”

The Sparks’ offseason personnel moves included trading popular first-round draft pick Rickea Jackson to make the roster older, one that Pebley said could better position the team for a title run.

“Loved having her here … she’ll be successful wherever she goes,” Pebley said of Jackson shortly after the trade. “But we’re focused on winning a championship and finding that fit and balance and getting all those pieces locked in with each other.”

Pebley’s other moves included trading the No. 2 pick in the 2025 draft, which became Seattle center Dominique Malonga, for Plum, and trading the Sparks’ first-round pick this year, which became third overall selection Awa Fam, for Kia Nurse and the No. 4 pick in 2024, which the Sparks used to select Jackson.

Instead of demonstrating marked improvement, the Sparks have struggled with consistency, at times showing their potential, as in a win at Las Vegas, a dramatic come-from-behind win against New York on the league’s 30th anniversary and a defensive shutdown of Fever guard Caitlin Clark last week.

With the trade deadline less than a month away, Pebley had expressed excitement about the return of Plum and Cameron Brink.

“Knowing those two are going to be added into a group that’s continued to be able to get better in their absence,” she said, “I think we have a right to be optimistic.”

The franchise found itself in the middle of some controversy with reports that the Sparks were among more than half the players in the league who did not complete their All-Star starter ballots. The ballots were emailed to players, but they reportedly did not see them in time to vote. Plum was not named a starter despite leading the WNBA in scoring at the time votes were cast, although it’s unclear whether full player participation would have altered a decision calculated by combining player, fan and media votes.

“That’s something we take responsibility for as an organization, and we’ll have a more robust process going forward,” the Sparks said in a statement.

Soon afterward, the Sparks’ director of communications left the team.

The Sparks hired Pebley in January 2024 to help the former WNBA champions break out of their playoff drought.

A third-round pick by the Utah Starzz in the WNBA’s inaugural 1997 draft, Pebley was the coach at Utah State (2005 to 2012) and Fresno State (2012 to 2014) before a nine-year stint at Texas Christian, where she led the Horned Frogs to four WNIT appearances in her first five years before stepping down in 2023 as TCU finished 8-23. She was a TV analyst for the Dallas Wings from 2016 to 2023.

His 7-6 record at USC in 2024 would go down as the worst mark of Lincoln Riley’s career as a head football coach. But in his third and rockiest year at the helm of the Trojans, Riley was still compensated like one of the kings of the sport.

Riley was paid more than $11.8 million in total compensation during the fiscal year 2024, according to USC’s latest federal tax returns, which were obtained by The Times. That total includes a $100,000 bonus and $10.4 million in base pay, believed to be more than all but three college football coaches that season: Georgia’s Kirby Smart, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney and Ohio State’s Ryan Day. All three have won a national title.

For Riley, his pay in 2024 marks just a slight increase from the 2023 season, when USC paid Riley more than $11.5 million in total compensation. The coach’s base pay increased by $145,143 between fiscal years 2023 and 2024, slightly less than it rose following his debut season in 2022 ($168,000).

At least in 2024, USC only had to pay one football coach, after paying Clay Helton a combined $9 million not to coach over the two previous years.

The school would, however, have to pay up a bit to bring in a new men’s basketball coach.

After Andy Enfield left to coach Southern Methodist after the 2023-24 season, USC shelled out more than $6.1 million total in 2024 to lure coach Eric Musselman from Arkansas, according to the university’s latest federal tax records. One million of that was paid to Arkansas to buy out Musselman’s contract.

That puts Musselman at a reported $5.1 million in total pay and benefits from the school in 2024, according to the school’s tax records. That total likely includes additional costs unique to a coaching change. But altogether, it would have ranked Musselman among the highest-paid coaches in the Big Ten for the 2024-25 season.

Musselman didn’t exactly deliver on that investment during the 2024-25 season, as USC bottomed out during its first Big Ten men’s basketball slate. The Trojans finished 17-18 and 7-13 in the Big Ten.

After including her information in tax forms from the previous year, the university did not disclose compensation figures from 2024 for USC athletic director Jennifer Cohen. Federal tax returns filed last May had credited Cohen with more than $3 million in reportable compensation in her first year on the job, $1 million of which was used to buy out Cohen from her Washington contract.