Los Angeles Sparks star Kelsey Plum stepped to the mound at Dodger Stadium on Saturday night and showed off her arm once again.
You know, the same arm that continues to go viral because of a highlight that featured her firing a t-shirt into a crowd of San Antonio Spurs fans back in 2017.
Saturday saw it throw the first pitch before the Los Angeles Dodgers-Baltimore Orioles game. It marked the end of a busy week for Plum, as she also served as an in-studio analyst during Sports on Prime’s WNBA broadcast on Thursday.
It’s easy to assume that the 31-year-old two-time WNBA champion can step into many roles and do just about anything she puts her mind to. Anything, that is, except ignite the Sparks by herself.
It’s not like Plum hasn’t had an impressive supporting cast. With veterans Nneka Ogwumike and Dearica Hamby in tow, you’re talking about a combined four WNBA championships and 17 All-Star nominations.
Yet, heading into Sunday’s tussle with the New York Liberty (5 p.m. PT, ESPN), the Sparks are in 11th place in the WNBA, three spots behind the Toronto Tempo and just behind the Portland Fire. They’re a half-game behind Toronto for the eighth and final playoff spot entering this week.
So why is a team with an abundance of talent led by this triumvirate sitting outside the playoff field nearly 35% of the way into the season and tucked awkwardly behind the league’s newest expansion teams?
Injuries? Schedule grind? Traveling?
Sure, one can point at those things.
But every team has to deal with those obstacles.
“We’ve got to just learn what we need to and move forward,” Sparks coach Lynne Roberts said after Wednesday’s 16-point home loss to the Minnesota Lynx. “You just keep grinding. You’ve got to have the grit to just not focus on what’s not going well, in terms of mentally and you’ve got to focus on what we can do better. That’s on all of us.
“Coaches. Players. Everybody.”
COACHES
When talking about coaches, it always starts at the top.
While there are plenty of disgruntled social media trolls who would like to see Roberts ushered back to the college ranks, they’re wrong.
Roberts has the potential to emerge as one of the league’s best coaches, as she’s coached plenty of talented players in college and won a pair of conference Coach of the Year honors for good reason.
The California native built Utah into a Pac-12 contender among teams like Stanford, Oregon, Oregon State, and Arizona State. She coached against Plum and Cameron Brink, and has acknowledged she’s grateful she has them on her team and doesn’t have to scout them in the professional ranks. She was designing defensive sets against Oregon when the Ducks had Sabrina Ionescu, whom her Sparks will face on Sunday night.
Roberts isn’t necessarily the problem as much as she is getting her team to buy in when the offense is clicking and the defense is nowhere to be found. It’s the team’s defensive gap that has kept it from turning progress into wins.
For instance, during a three-game winning streak in late May, the Sparks averaged 96.6 points per game, but also allowed 90. During another three-game win streak earlier this month, the team averaged 96 and allowed 85.6.
It’s slight improvement between streaks, so there’s that. For the season, the team is averaging 87.7 points per game. But when L.A. hasn’t met that plateau, the Sparks are 0-6 and allowing 88.6 points per contest.
Roberts experienced similar traits at Utah. Her Utes ranked 261st nationally with their scoring defense in her first season and improved to 141st by year three. As the roster was rebuilt, the defense plummeted, sinking as low as 307th, but again it improved, climbing to 117th by her final season in Salt Lake City.
Is it fair to compare college to pro?
The talent and competition are entirely different, sure. But the coaching style seemingly remains the same.
It’s Roberts’ process that matters. The biggest difference between coaching college kids and some of the best women in the world is that you don’t get nine years to prove your worth.
You’re no longer molding young minds and teaching players how to evolve at the next level. You’re blending the personalities of mature women and the best-of-the-best basketball talent.
It’s what makes the run into the All-Star break important beginning tonight.
On the heels of back-to-back losses, they’re facing the well-oiled Liberty. New York staggers in after a shocking upset loss to the Washington Mystics on Friday.
“Every team at some point in the season is going to hit adversity, and how you respond determines how your season goes,” said Roberts, after the Sparks allowed the Lynx to score 99 on an effective field-goal percentage of .618. “We’re hitting ours now. What’s our response going to be?”
Good question.
KELSEY MITCHELL ANKLE BREAKER AND THE THREE
pic.twitter.com/4KeniVPtM7
— ESPN (@espn) June 20, 2026
PLAYERS
The “key” players have been Plum, Ogwumike, and Hamby. But, again, they cannot be expected to carry the team nightly.
They’ve been effective offensively, but appear to be an uneven unit when looking at it as an impact group because of defense and consistency issues surrounding them.
The thing is, none of them is going to point the finger in other directions. They’re all leaders and will take the blame before passing the buck. Plum is an offensive engine. Ogwumike is the consummate two-way producer. To some degree, Hamby is the glue for the team.
They’re all capable of providing everything you need from a big three. Plum can go for 30, Ogwumike can turn in a double-double, or Hamby produces the blue-collar work.
When all three are triggered simultaneously, the Sparks are capable of dominating the paint and producing with their transition game, punishing mismatches at all three levels, and beating the top teams, even in shootouts, as we saw when they visited Las Vegas on May 23. Plum scored 38 points and dished out nine assists on a night where L.A. shot 55% from the field.
But when one or all of them is off, the question is who will be the x-factor, or factors? Do the Sparks have them ready to fire? Absolutely.
Brink, Ariel Atkins, Rae Burrell, and Erica Wheeler are all capable of taking over a game. Emma Cannon, Kate Martin, and newly signed Kiana Williams must be ready for their numbers to be called and step into a game with enough confidence to provide support off the bench and turn in quality minutes.
EVERYBODY
The Sparks could be one “players only meeting” away from this team’s turnaround.
Somebody has to get into the players’ heads that they’re not going to the postseason by allowing the second-highest points in the league. That’s where they’re at now with an allowance of just under 91 per game entering Sunday.
They can’t be tied with the last-place, two-win Connecticut Sun in allowing a league-worst .475 shooting from the floor. They also sit alone at the bottom by letting teams shoot a whopping .566 from two-point range. L.A. also can’t be turning the ball over 14.9 times per game, third-most in the W.
All of these things are critical with a brutal upcoming schedule. Seven of their final 10 games before the break against teams with a .500 record or better.
“I believe in this group,” Roberts said. “We all want to succeed here, and we’re going to. It’s not a ‘I hope.’
“We’re going to figure it out. I promise you.”
The post Will Sparks Find Spark In Year 30? appeared first on Ballislife.com.