{"id":121242,"date":"2025-08-30T17:59:18","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T17:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/121242\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T17:59:18","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T17:59:18","slug":"lynne-roberts-speaks-on-possible-reasons-for-wnba-injuries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/121242\/","title":{"rendered":"Lynne Roberts speaks on possible reasons for WNBA injuries"},"content":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES \u2013 Just before Los Angeles Sparks<\/a> head coach Lynne Roberts\u2019 pregame press conference on Friday, she had been meeting with her staff talking about potential reasons for the uptick in injuries this WNBA season.<\/p>\n

The Sparks have been relatively healthy since Cameron Brink returned to the lineup on July 29. Since then, Friday\u2019s game against Indiana<\/a> marked the 11th straight game the team has had a clean injury report. That was in stark contrast to the Fever who have multiple players out for the season with multiple hardship contracts<\/a> signed.<\/p>\n

During Roberts\u2019 pregame media availability, she pondered the potential reasons as to why the WNBA has seen multiple injuries to key players this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just talking to my staff about it, wondering what do you think it is, why are there so many injuries? There\u2019s probably a lot of reasons, and I think. . .you have to look at the whole calendar year for these athletes, not just the W season,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cThey\u2019re playing overseas, they\u2019re not getting that break that most professional athletes get. There really is no offseason.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think you can look at that, you can look at the physicality, you can look at. . .over the past few years the time in between games has shrunk. I\u2019m not the person in the room to make those decisions, but I think it\u2019s a great question,\u201d Roberts continued. \u201cI think everyone is asking it, and I\u2019m certain the league and the owners and all the powers that be will evaluate and really kind of peel back the layers as to what\u2019s going on. . .So hopefully we can find a fix, but I don\u2019t know the answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Roberts and the Sparks have enjoyed good health for the majority of the second half of the season, they were almost a mirror image of where the Fever are right now. Against the Sparks, the Fever were missing Caitlin Clark, Sydney Colson, Sophie Cunningham and Aari McDonald. In the case of the latter three, they are all out for the season. Clark\u2019s status is a little more unclear<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the Sparks were missing Cameron Brink and Rae Burrell due to injury, and Julie Allemand due to EuroBasket. Rickea Jackson missed time due to league-mandated concussion protocol and Odyssey Sims missed time due to personal reasons. Sims has since signed with the Fever on a hardship contract.<\/p>\n

Brink has been one of the league\u2019s most vocal proponents of expanding roster size<\/a> from the current number of 12 players, because of the seeming increase in injuries. The WNBA is set to expand to 15 teams next season with the additions of the Portland Fire and Toronto Tempo. This comes a year after the league expanded to 13 teams with the Golden State Valkyries.<\/p>\n

By 2030, the WNBA is expected to have 18 teams as new franchises in Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia are added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2013 Just before Los Angeles Sparks head coach Lynne Roberts\u2019 pregame press conference on Friday, she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[3029,581,99,434,70753],"class_list":["post-121242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-los-angeles-sparks","tag-reporting","tag-sports","tag-wnba","tag-wnba-injury"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}