{"id":104265,"date":"2025-08-29T00:27:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T00:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/104265\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T00:27:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T00:27:07","slug":"with-playoffs-in-sight-sparks-welcome-fever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/104265\/","title":{"rendered":"With playoffs in sight, Sparks welcome Fever"},"content":{"rendered":"

With two weeks left in the WNBA regular season, the Los Angeles Sparks<\/a> stand 1 1\/2 games behind Seattle for the last of eight playoff spots.<\/p>\n

But to use an old hockey term, Los Angeles has one major advantage: Games in hand.<\/p>\n

The Sparks have eight games left, three more than the Storm. And the first of those is at home Friday night against the Indiana Fever<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Sparks (17-19) are coming off a 92-84 loss Tuesday night to Phoenix, which led by as many as 16 points in the fourth quarter. Three-point defense was a major problem as the Mercury hit 11 of 25 while Los Angeles made only 7 of 24.<\/p>\n

“That’s where the difference in the game is,” Sparks coach Lynne Roberts said. “We typically shoot it better. We’re scrapping for our lives … we’re all playing for something.”<\/p>\n

To reach the postseason, Los Angeles will have to improve on defense, where it’s allowing a league-worst 88.5 points per game. Their offense has countered a lot of the defensive shortcomings averaging 86.3 ppg, second in the league. Kelsey Plum leads the team with 20.4 ppg.<\/p>\n

While the Sparks try to jump back into the playoff picture, Indiana (20-18) is presently in the field as the sixth seed. The Fever are coming off one of their best games of the year, a 95-75 rout at home Tuesday night against Seattle.<\/p>\n

Aliyah Boston scored a game-high 27 points in just 27 minutes, while Odyssey Sims added 22 and Kelsey Mitchell hit for 21. Indiana earned a 42-21 rebounding advantage and led by as many as 32 points in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n

“I felt like this was as close to 40 minutes as we’ve put together consistently in a long time,” said Fever coach Stephanie White.<\/p>\n

This game starts a pivotal three-game western road trip for Indiana, which also heads to Golden State and Phoenix. The Fever will probably still be without Caitlin Clark, who’s been out since July 16 with a groin injury, during the trip.<\/p>\n

Los Angeles has won the first three meetings of the teams this year, including a 100-91 decision at home on Aug. 5.<\/p>\n

–Field Level Media<\/p>\n

\n Copyright 2025 STATS LLC and Field Level Media. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Field Level Media is strictly prohibited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With two weeks left in the WNBA regular season, the Los Angeles Sparks stand 1 1\/2 games behind…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,2803,632,82,630],"class_list":["post-104265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-indiana-fever","tag-los-angeles-sparks","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}