LOS ANGELES -- Every new season is a new beginning in sports.
But for the Los Angeles Sparks, every new season has seemingly become a new era as of late.
Two years ago, the Sparks brought in a new regime that included longtime Storm general manager Karen Bryant and longtime Sun dual coach/GM Curt Miller. The team had a nice roster of veterans but had a litany of injuries. In the end, L.A. missed the playoffs for the third straight season.
In that offseason, franchise stalwart Nneka Ogwumike left for the Storm while the Sparks drafted their next potential superstars in Cameron Brink and Rickea Jackson. In that sense, the Sparks had another major reset. But the team was once again ravaged with injuries as they finished with a league-worst 8-32 record. Miller was ousted as coach and Lynne Roberts from the University of Utah was brought in after an exhaustive search. To help accelerate the rebuild, the Sparks dealt the #2 overall pick of the 2025 WNBA Draft to bring in all-star Kelsey Plum from the Aces.
Now another new era begins again for the Sparks. Media Day brought in a lot of hope. Of course, there are expectations from the team. But they also seemed to temper them a bit.
“Kelsey (Plum) and I weren’t here last year and I have not talked about last year at all,” Coach Roberts said during their national press conference on Monday. “I think this is a new team. There’s a lot of new players. I think we’ve got an incredible balance of veterans that know what it takes. And then we’ve got some good young talent that are figuring it out.
“What are our expectations? How to get back to that?” Roberts continued. “Kelsey just said it: it’s a process. You don’t go from not having a good year to being the best in a month. It takes time. It takes a lot of work. It takes getting back up when you’ve been knocked down. It takes continuing to learn and have the humility to see when whether it’s me or the players or whatever that need to be better. It’s a lot of work. So my expectation is that we just continue to climb and I don’t know what ceiling is this season; it’s too early to tell. But I know that this group is going to compete. It’s hard but we’re just not happy to be here.”
Coach Roberts made it no secret she wanted to make the postseason. And while she shared that it might not happen immediately, she made it plain and simple on what she wanted.
“I wanted the challenge and I want to win,” Roberts said. “And that’s it. It’s that simple.”
She also made this very clear.
“I don’t like the term ‘rebuild,’” Roberts emphasized. “I just don’t. I don’t think we’re rebuilding. I think we’re where we want to be to start competing.”
Newcomer Plum, who has won two championships with the Aces, is focused on helping the Sparks back to prominence.
“My focus is trying to affect winning,” Plum said when asked about her individual goals. “There’s a lot of people that can have empty statistics. But I’m really focused on how I can help this team win. I understand where we were last year and my goal is to significantly change that. I think the individual numbers will come. I think people might be surprised by them. But at the end of the day, that’s the reason that I was put in this position: to be able to carry a heavier load. And I have broad shoulders.”
Last year, she was a rookie sensation. And now in her second year, Rickea Jackson seems more confident of herself and the team.
“New team, new group but even where we are now, we are ahead of the curve in terms of our newness,” Jackson said during Media Day on Tuesday. “We’re new, we’re still getting it but there’s a lot of vets on the team so everyone is a hooper and everybody is a dawg. And you can just tell at the end of the day, we just want to win.”
There is a lot of talent on this team. The roster includes all-star Dearica Hamby, Plum, Jackson, Azurá Stevens, Odyssey Sims, Rae Burrell, and when she returns, Cameron Brink.
But as mentioned, the team is mostly young. They haven’t been together for very long. And they have a new coach and a new system to implement.
“The challenge is that there is so much ‘new,’” Roberts said on Tuesday. “Teaching a whole new system, all the things… it takes time. There’s teams in the league that are established and the coach has been there for a long time. Day One, they’re scrimmaging with all their stuff in. We’re in a different boat so we have to keep perspective on what progress looks like for us. It’s gonna be a process. We’re all feeling that a little bit but they’re getting it.”
Still, the days of old are beginning to be left behind.
“For one, us making that jump from (El Camino College) to (a better training facililty),” Sparks guard Aari McDonald said when asked about player investment. “It’s amazing to have a training room that’s big enough, a weight room with a lot of machines. That was pretty big for us. It’s the little things like feeding us in the morning and after so I think they’re taking good care of us this year.”
Making the big trades, player investment, and a new coach and system that can fire up the Sparks offense, who were in the bottom three last season. All of those may add up to something positive. Can the Sparks finally break through in 2025?
“My end goal is that we make the playoffs. But I’m not talking about that today,” Coach Roberts said. “We’re talking about competing at Golden State on Friday. And then we’ll wake up on Saturday and talk about the next opponent. And that’s how you get there.”