{"id":93472,"date":"2025-08-19T04:14:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T04:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/93472\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T04:14:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T04:14:06","slug":"kelsey-plums-honest-admission-on-las-tough-schedule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/93472\/","title":{"rendered":"Kelsey Plum\u2019s honest admission on LA\u2019s tough schedule"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ever since the Los Angeles Sparks came out hot to start the second half of the season<\/a> at 6-1, they\u2019ve hit a little bit of a rough patch going 2-3 over their last five games. The Sparks\u2019 most recent loss<\/a>, 95-86 to the Washington Mystics, comes as the team is trying to make a late season push for the playoffs. It also comes during a tough stretch of the schedule, but Sparks All-Star guard Kelsey Plum<\/a> was quick to shoot down any notion that the schedule should play a factor in the team\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n

The Mystics game was the Sparks\u2019 seventh game in 13 days. They have two days of rest before facing off \u00a0against the Dallas Wings on Wednesday. The team will then have nearly a week off before resuming play against the Phoenix Mercury on Aug. 26. Following the Sparks\u2019 loss to the Mystics, Kelsey Plum downplayed the thought that the tough schedule should have anything to do with the team\u2019s play.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome things I\u2019ve learned in this league is [whether it\u2019s] two days, one day or six days [of rest], no one feels bad for anyone,\u201d Plum said. \u201cSo it doesn\u2019t matter, at the end of the day you gotta show up and play basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the most part, the Sparks had been playing fairly good basketball as of late. This was a team that was on pace to miss the postseason for the fifth consecutive season for sure. Now, the team is firmly in the mix for the playoffs, even with their recent hiccups. They still remain only half a game behind the Seattle Storm for the eighth and final playoff spot, and they currently hold the tiebreaker over the Storm with one game remaining in the head-to-head series.<\/p>\n

Plum was the Sparks\u2019 lone All-Star this season, and she\u2019s been as good as advertised. The Sparks shifted to more of a win-now situation when they traded the No. 2 overall pick in this past draft in a sign-and-trade to acquire Plum.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s appeared in 33 out of 34 games for the Sparks at a little over 35 minutes per game. She\u2019s been averaging a career-high 20.4 points, 3.3 rebounds, 6.1 assists and 1.3 steals with splits of 43.2 percent shooting from the field, 37.2 percent shooting from the three-point line and 89.7 percent shooting from the free-throw line. Her rebounds, assists and steals are all career-highs as well.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a learning curve for Plum this year<\/a> as she navigates being the lead guard and top option for the Sparks. Her presence is one of the key reasons why head coach Lynne Roberts isn\u2019t too concerned following the Mystics loss.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe message we learned. . .is we can\u2019t come out and think it\u2019s going to be easy. . .We can\u2019t panic or think that the sky is falling, and we\u2019ve had tough losses before and we\u2019ve always bounced back,\u201d Roberts said after the Mystics game. \u201cSo I believe in this group, and trust them, and these two [Kelsey Plum and Dearica Hamby] sitting next to me are as reliable as they come. And when your best players are like that, then you have every reason to be confident.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Yapkowitz<\/a> is a basketball journalist for ClutchPoints, writing news on the NBA, WNBA, and NCAA Basketball for both men and women. The Los Angeles native has bylines with Basketball Insiders, SB Nation, and The Next Hoops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ever since the Los Angeles Sparks came out hot to start the second half of the season at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[10504,3029,581,99,434],"class_list":["post-93472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-kelsey-plum","tag-los-angeles-sparks","tag-reporting","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93472","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=93472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}