TORRANCE \u2014 The Los Angeles Sparks waived second-year forward Sania Feagin on Friday morning to make room for a backup point guard, according to head coach Lynne Roberts.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was waived this morning, which is tough,\u201d Roberts said at the team\u2019s practice facility. \u201cWe have a real need for another ball-handling point guard.\u201d<\/p>\n
The transaction was made to sign reserve point guard Kiana Williams, whom the Sparks offered a contract to Thursday. A 2021 second-round draft pick by the Seattle Storm out of Stanford, where she was a teammate of Sparks forward Cameron Brink, Williams was on a developmental player contract with the Phoenix Mercury. Phoenix had the right to upgrade the 27-year-old to a standard contract but declined to do so.<\/p>\n
The Sparks are the first WNBA team to poach a developmental contract player from another franchise in league history.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s more about our need for another point guard,\u201d Roberts said, \u201cand somebody that can take some pressure off of Erica (Wheeler) and Kelsey (Plum). We tried to figure it out with Chance Gray or JP (Jihyun Park) or Ta\u2019Niya (Latson). That\u2019s asking them to play out of their positions and it was taking away from what they\u2019re good at. Just really had a need for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams, a 5-foot-7 guard, averaged 4.8 points on 36% shooting from 3-point range in 13.1 minutes in eight games for the Mercury this season. She has averaged 2.2 points and 0.6 assists in 46 career games with Seattle, Connecticut and Phoenix.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s a good player,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cShe can shoot, but she can help run the team. When she\u2019s out there, get us into the right spots. Execute the way we need to. She\u2019s a smart player and has a lot of experience. She was at Unrivaled this year with a lot of our guys. She played with EW (Erica Wheeler) and Nneka (Ogwumike) in Seattle, so there\u2019s a comfort level with our roster, so we feel good about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Feagin, a 6-3 forward, was a Sparks 2025 second-round draft pick out of South Carolina. She averaged 1.1 points in 4.6 minutes of playing time in 19 career games. The former Gamecock, hampered by a left leg injury, did not score in three games this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tough,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cLove Sania and still believe that she can make it in this league. It\u2019s just more about our need. That\u2019s the business side of it, but certainly the human side is tough.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sparks (7-8) will host the New York Liberty on Sunday at 5 p.m. at Crypto.com Arena.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORRANCE \u2014 The Los Angeles Sparks waived second-year forward Sania Feagin on Friday morning to make room for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":714757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[2356,23758,13489,3029,99,81642,434],"class_list":["post-714756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-california","tag-la-sparks","tag-los-angeles-county","tag-los-angeles-sparks","tag-sports","tag-torrance","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714756","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=714756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/714757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}