{"id":268893,"date":"2026-04-15T10:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T10:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/268893\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T10:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T10:36:09","slug":"shaky-sparks-attempting-to-rebuild-future-with-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/268893\/","title":{"rendered":"Shaky Sparks attempting to rebuild future with the past"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Amid a glittering sports celebration, a team from Los Angeles dominated the WNBA draft<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t Los Angeles\u2019 WNBA team.<\/p>\n

The Sparks<\/a> couldn\u2019t hold a candle to UCLA<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At a Monday event during which six Bruins were drafted among the first 18 picks \u2014 a WNBA record \u2014 the Sparks didn\u2019t have their first pick until No. 20 in the second round.<\/p>\n

Two years earlier, they had traded away their first-round pick for the rights to draft the exciting Rickea Jackson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Whom they recently traded to Chicago for somebody named Ariel Atkins.<\/p>\n

You can see where we\u2019re going with this…<\/p>\n

One of the WNBA\u2019s founding franchises, the failure-ridden Sparks enter the league\u2019s 30th season attempting to break a five-year playoff drought with an understandable yet unremarkable game plan.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re going old. They don\u2019t have a choice. Five years of lottery missteps have produced exactly one current Sparks player, Cameron Brink, a social media star who\u2019s been an injured basketball bust.<\/p>\n

While the national champion Bruins spent Monday dancing across the league from Toronto to Chicago, the Sparks didn\u2019t get a chance to acquire any of them, and wound up with three late picks who will raise no eyebrows and play few minutes.<\/p>\n

So, yeah, old.<\/p>\n

When the Sparks open the season by hosting defending champion Las Vegas May 10, their fans are going to say, \u201cOh yeah!\u201d followed by a resounding chorus of, \u201cOh no!\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh yeah, they\u2019re bringing back longtime Sparks star Nneka Ogwumike<\/a>, a bruising inside force for 14 seasons. She played well for Seattle last year, but, oh no, she\u2019ll be 36 during the season, and one wonders when the physicality will take its toll.<\/p>\n

Oh yeah, they\u2019re bringing back Erica Wheeler, who played strong minutes here several years ago. But, oh no, she played for three teams in the last four years and will be 35 during the season.<\/p>\n

Oh yeah, they\u2019re bringing in Atkins, who once won a WNBA championship with the Washington Mystics. But, oh no, that was seven years ago, and she\u2019s bounced around with six international teams and two WNBA teams since.<\/p>\n

Those three veterans will be joining a team with two returning starters \u2014 Kelsey Plum and Dearica Hamby<\/a> \u2014 but little else.<\/p>\n

The league\u2019s celebrated new CBA made all these players rich, but did little for the Sparks, who were unable to make a dent in the league-wide free agent market and were out of decent draft picks and so must survive for one more season before getting a shot at JuJu Watkins<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So they should tank? No! Not yet! I\u2019ve got season tickets! But you\u2019ve got to wonder. And if this aging band gets off to a slow start, you\u2019ve got to wonder if they\u2019re wondering.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m super excited about the roster we have,\u201d said coach Lynne Roberts on a Zoom call Monday night. \u201cWe brought in some tremendous leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n

But they also lost some tremendous youth by giving up on Jackson, who averaged nearly 15 points last season and provided much-needed energy to another deadly dull squad. While the Sparks made nice with her publicly, one can read between the lines on the following Zoom quote from general manager Raegan Pebley.<\/p>\n

\u201dLoved having her here \u2026 she\u2019ll be successful wherever she goes,\u201d said Pebley of Jackson. \u201cBut we\u2019re focused on winning a championship and finding that fit and balance and getting all those pieces locked in with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s guessing Jackson, an independent spirit, was never quite locked in. And now she\u2019s locked out of a new culture that will be solid and steady\u2026 but will they be any good?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to have that balance of youth and experience and I think our roster has nailed that,\u201d said Pebley.<\/p>\n

Who knows? Will Brink stop trying to be an influencer long enough to be an inside presence? Will Rae Burrell take another step in her fifth season? Can the new veterans stay healthy enough to inspire the kids, who could include draft picks Ta\u2019Niya Latson, Chance Gray and Amelia Hassett? Can Roberts, a relative WNBA newcomer who lost more than half of her games in her debut last season, actually coach?<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve already had one win with the ongoing construction of an $150-million El Segundo practice facility, which should open next year and serve to attract the type of stars that a Los Angeles team deserves.<\/p>\n

They have another steady win with a Crypto.com Arena fan-friendly game experience that ranks among the best in this city\u2019s sports landscape.<\/p>\n

Now they just need wins on the scoreboard, lots of them, enough to restore faith in what was once one of this city\u2019s shining basketball operations.<\/p>\n

The odds aren\u2019t good \u2014 going old usually means going home early \u2014 but what else can they do? No Bruins are walking through that door. For at least one more year, the Sparks have to marinate in their past mistakes and hope that their veterans can somehow lay a foundation for their future..<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t a slow roll,\u201d said Roberts. \u201cWe want to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rest of the league, which has greatly benefited from five years of Sparks\u2019 bad basketball decisions, will be waiting.<\/p>\n

Their passionate fans, who have loyally kept showing up for the last five years to watch the lousy basketball those decisions have wrought, will be wanting.<\/p>\n

And JuJu will be watching.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amid a glittering sports celebration, a team from Los Angeles dominated the WNBA draft. But it wasn\u2019t Los…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[102199,320,8425,13565,48,52,51,10572,47,50,49,63,117146,86805,87217,427,1092,7780,1543,117145,72],"class_list":{"0":"post-268893","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-30th-season","9":"tag-chance","10":"tag-future","11":"tag-jackson","12":"tag-la","13":"tag-la-headlines","14":"tag-la-news","15":"tag-league","16":"tag-los-angeles","17":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","18":"tag-los-angeles-news","19":"tag-los-angeles-times","20":"tag-monday-event","21":"tag-spark","22":"tag-sparks","23":"tag-team","24":"tag-ucla","25":"tag-veteran","26":"tag-win","27":"tag-wnba-team","28":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}