It says \u201cSparks\u201d across the front of her jersey, but the stats make it look like she\u2019s still repping the Dawgs.<\/p>\n
The cartoon numbers Kelsey Plum put up at the University of Washington are being replicated in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
The former Wooden Award winner is averaging 24.8 points per game (second in the WNBA), which is 4.6 more than her career high. She is shooting .558 from the field, 9.1 percentage points higher than her career best. The ninth-year veteran is also dishing out a career-high 6.9 assists per game \u2013 third in the league \u2013 and her three-point shooting percentage is at .407.<\/p>\n
Normally when players are asked to carry a greater load for their teams, their efficiency goes down. But Kelsey is an exception that\u2019s breaking the rule\u2019s ankles.<\/p>\n
Twelve games into the season, the four-time All-Star is on a pace that could earn Plum her first MVP award. So what changed?<\/p>\n
\u201cBasketball\u2019s kind of like a war of attrition. I feel like as a player you just kind of refine things and maybe you don\u2019t see it pay off for a while, and then it kind of clicks together. I think that\u2019s probably what you\u2019re seeing,\u201d said the 31-year-old Plum from Climate Pledge Arena on Wednesday, before she dropped 19 points and 11 assists in a five-point win over the Storm. \u201cNothing vastly different. I definitely spend more time in the weight room and less time on the court. That\u2019s probably the biggest difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s zero in on that last part. Plum said that this was by far her \u201chardest\u201d offseason in terms of training, as she spent upward of three and a half to four hours in the weight room daily. It wasn\u2019t all squats and dead lifts, either. It was isometric training. It was conditioning. It was a series of practical exercises that would supercharge her bursts and ability to play through contact.<\/p>\n
Her most astounding stat, after all, might be her two-point shooting percentage \u2013 which sits at .671. Her best for a full season was .550 in 2023, and she\u2019s at .480 from inside the arc for her career. That uptick is what being able to finish at the rim looks like. For context, the 6-foot-4 A\u2019ja Wilson \u2013 the reigning WNBA MVP who\u2019s got eight inches on Kelsey \u2013 is shooting .513 this season from two.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the biggest change from previous seasons to this one, though, is Plum\u2019s patience. Take the Sparks\u2019 game vs. Portland last Sunday. For the first 16 minutes and 30 seconds, Plum didn\u2019t attempt a single field goal. Not because she was timid, but because doing so beforehand would have felt forced.<\/p>\n
Even so, Kelsey finished 16 points, seven assists, six rebounds and three steals in a 17-point victory.<\/p>\n
I imagine five years ago you wouldn\u2019t have been OK with waiting that long to shoot, I said to Plum.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would\u2019ve freakin\u2019 had a seizure,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately for Plum, all this individual success is mitigated by her team sitting with a 6-6 record. This, after going 21-23 in her first season in L.A. last year.<\/p>\n
That was a massive improvement over the Sparks\u2019 8-32 record in 2024, but remember \u2013 Kelsey came from the Las Vegas Aces, with whom she won two titles.<\/p>\n
After the aforementioned Portland win, in which L.A. snapped a three-game losing streak, Plum sounded off about her team needing to take pride in its defense.<\/p>\n
A reporter asked if that pride had been lacking.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to speak for anyone else, but when you have the worst defensive rating of all time in the (WNBA), you tell me?\u201d<\/p>\n
Plum, as you might imagine, doesn\u2019t \u201cgive a damn about all these numbers if we\u2019re not winning.\u201d To be honest, I\u2019m not sure how much she cares about them even if they are winning. But it was clear before Wednesday\u2019s game in Seattle that she was far more concerned about getting her winning percentage to .500 than her shooting percentage to .600.<\/p>\n
So right now, as the undisputed best player on the Sparks, her challenge is to be a leader as much as a scorer or distributor. Maybe that means pulling someone aside midgame. Maybe it just means serving as an example to follow.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the biggest test of leadership is showing up every day and figuring out, like OK \u2013 every day is a new puzzle. What can I do to contribute to winning?\u201d Plum said. \u201cIt\u2019s a healthy challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plum is playing the best basketball of her career. If that keeps up, the victories should follow.<\/p>\n
The stats she posted at UW her senior year were straight out of a video game. Nine years later, the console appears to be back in her hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It says \u201cSparks\u201d across the front of her jersey, but the stats make it look like she\u2019s still…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":702655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-702654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702654","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=702654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/702655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=702654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=702654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=702654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}