Around this time in 2025, I was sitting in the crowd at the final Los Angeles Sparks game for the season. While they would lose to the Las Vegas Aces, there was plenty of evidence to suggest that the future was looking bright. In the week prior, they had been fighting it out for their first real playoff eligibility in close to five years. In fact, they had only missed the window by one game. While a devastating blow, it’s the type of circumstance that fills you with delusion, believing that putting in a bit more hard work would make any difference.
More than the game itself, the moment that stuck out was what happened after. As everyone shuffled off, Kelsey Plum took to center court and announced that the team’s plans for next season were to try harder. It is the typical underdog story, but when missing the cutoff by one game, it’s the type of rhetoric fans can really believe in. After all, this was momentum after a rebuild window following the fallout of several controversial players, a few coach switch-ups, and star player Nneka Ogwumike being traded to The Seattle Storm. Patience was expected, but listening to Plum, it was easy to believe the payoff was inevitable.
The short answer is that The Sparks probably mean more to me solely because they’re the home WNBA team. Whomever the opponent is, I would always watch their introductory videos and be forced to engage with the larger culture. When you put that much time and effort in (I’ve been going to games since 2022), you can’t help but form an attachment to the minutiae. For as much as you can argue certain teams have better stats, I can’t help but love The Sparks because they’re my little ragtag team who, going into 2026, were looking to fulfill the promise I’ve been waiting for over this small window.
Talk to me in early July, and I would’ve still argued that The Sparks were about to have a special year. My barrier for success isn’t even to win the playoffs so much as to show up. At the time, I had attended two home games and was very much impressed with their technique. There was something electric about their potential that shined through during that 30th Anniversary game against The New York Liberty. I found myself believing that the second coming of Ogwumike would be enough to lock in those missing pieces and really wallop the competition.
As I write this, we’re at the end of August, and my opinion has drastically shifted. There has to be a lot of behind-the-scenes drama going on, because news lately has been the type to tear your heart in two, especially if you believed that The Sparks had that long-term charisma. It was the type of frenzy that made you forgive some questionable trades (most involving The Chicago Sky) because the results were positive for a time. Now, as the regular season enters its final stretch and everyone is locked into their corners of the will they/won’t they playoff standings, it’s best to get one thing out of the way… this is one of the worst years in modern Sparks franchise history.
To provide one quick addendum, I don’t wish to suggest that the games I attended were miserable. They won two of the three, and their margin of loss in the other was far smaller than anything I saw in the 2024 season. Depending on how you want to phrase the question, I might’ve argued that Lynne Roberts was one of the better coaches I’ve seen, but that’s mostly because she made what they had work in 2025. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for the past few months, when the only upbeat comment I’ve heard is the joke, “They really want Juju [Watkins].” In fact, the player who grabbed the microphone and promised to do better next year is not even there anymore.
This weekend provided many more nails in the coffin of things more observant fans have noticed. The simpler one to explain was the waiving of Alissa Pili. While she has been a favorite of mine, I understand that she’s struggled to fit into either WNBA team. My hope with her was that she’d eventually work her way up to being the brickhouse defender who really could maul through players and be that complementary tool in times of crisis. I’ll admit she fit better on The Sparks than The Minnesota Lynx, but that was also a team on the verge of a greatness they’ve yet to come down from.
You could say the same about the other player who was waived, Kate Martin. Following a rookie season with The Aces, she moved to The Golden State Valkyries before earning a developmental contract with The Sparks. Outside of the midseason departure of Plum that now reads like a canary in the coal mine, the saga of Martin is likely to remain contentious for some time. The dissenting opinion will say that she was never “that great” and cite many stories of her inferiority. Her lack of time on the court is reflected in some mythical lack of talent which, ironically, was often missing from players given longer playing minutes that she could’ve subbed for during the numerous dead-end games this season.
At the same time, how does one get better at playing if they’re not allowed to rack up experience? Despite being one of the most enthusiastic cheerleaders on the benches that I’ve seen, she’s been at odds with some higher-ups ever since the DP contract was promoted to full-time. In a bizarre move, she played more minutes under DP than in her final stretch of games where, in over a month, she probably played fewer minutes than fingers on hands. Rumors suggest that, having played with her on The Aces, Martin was advocated for by Plum. Without that defense, the coach’s implied animosity towards her kept her benched even during gameplay where it would’ve been sensible to let others rest. The effort Martin showed could even be argued to be a net positive, which only makes this more frustrating.
Consider what just happened. A player in her third year with decent stats spent most of this latest season being paid to do nothing. Even if the waiving was not done by Sparks management, nobody would fault her for walking.
The matter remains that, as someone who lived through Liz Cambage and Chennedy Carter’s time on the team, this feels like the biggest slap in the face I’ve seen. It’s one thing to dismantle your team during the offseason. There would at least be time to create a new plan with what you’ve got. Right now, it feels like something worse is underneath the surface, especially as the team that made my heart soar in June doesn’t seem to exist anymore. Ogwumike may be pushing herself to make the final games of her career meaningful, but there’s this sense that somebody else is making them fail, like this is all a conspiracy to get Juju Watkins on their team.
If that is the case, it’s a terrible way to go about things. Even if The Draft tends to favor poor performances, I’d like to think there’s more of a competent core for these rookies to join. It’s one thing to be like The Indiana Fever and have a very young and inexperienced team go number one, and quite another to get prospects because you lost the best shooter in the league and can’t seem to keep your bench happy. As it stands, I’m in the camp that firmly believes Angel Reese got a bad rap because The Sky’s management was so terrible that it took moving to a team with an actual competent staff to help her career flourish. Sure, that team has been building since Rhyne Howard was drafted in 2021, but there’s a reason they’re ranked highly at the moment.
The implosion frustrates me on a deeper level because it feels like a cheat. I’m not blaming any of the players for making their decisions. However, the past three years have felt like a trial and error where promise would peek through the cracks and let fans know that something greater was on the other side. When they weren’t reached, there was at least some promise that it was a little better than last year. I’m not kidding when I say that 2025 ended as one of my proudest moments of being a Sparks fan. You felt like everything was finally coming together. When they announced that Ogwumike was coming back, I was ecstatic. This was it. This was a sign. Years of rebuilding were finally paying off!
Losing Martin, in theory, isn’t the worst idea the team has announced this season. However, her involvement on the team symbolized many problems that lay underneath the surface. Why have these resources if you’re not going to use them? Even if she did put in some time, it can be suggested that Martin’s tenure on The Sparks was one of the biggest wastes in modern WNBA history. I’m not sure how soon it will be before the topic doesn’t leave me a bit heated. Even if she turns out to be a lower-tier player, the unwillingness to flirt with possibility feels like the opposite of what made The Sparks so intriguing in the years prior.
I recognize that my heart tends to favor players regardless of them being A-Listers. Most of the time I end up more invested in The Sparks’ supporting players because they’re the ones who show the most passion. Rae Burrell is probably my favorite at the moment because of how well she locks in and gets things done. In fact, I could probably go through my time attending games and make a list of players I thought were great who might never be close to an MVP race. To me, watching The Sparks is the promise of hope that this ragtag group will figure it out. When they do, there’s no sweeter music.
When they don’t, you get a moment like this weekend where you’re not sure what’s left in the tank. Admittedly, the year is over, and everyone is starting to pack up. I’m sure those with tickets to the remaining season are either selling or begrudgingly watching the team limp to the finish line. This isn’t like 2025, when the mystery carried us until the final week. This time it seems like one long flameout, if just to give fans a chance to buy merch of former players at 25% off. Even then, what is the value of a Kate Martin jersey when it felt like the real thing was worth less?
I want to believe this uncertain period is going to pave the way for another big reveal. However, this was supposed to be the rebuild period. We were supposed to be reaching a culmination, or at least the first warning shot to the league that we got some fire in our belly. That’s what the past few years have felt like. If I seem annoyed, it’s because that messaging got lost somewhere along the way. My hope is that Martin and anyone who disappears before 2027 move on to greener pastures. I will still be going to games in the near future, but I hope they have a good excuse for making it so tough to be a Sparks fan this year.
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