Last September, the Los Angeles Sparks sat in their exit interviews and discussed what they’d built. They’d won 21 games, more than double their total from 2024. They went 15-9 after the All-Star break, and beat six of the eight playoff teams on the road at least once. They played fast, they adjusted to new coaching under Lynne Roberts, and had the exciting addition of All-Star Kelsey Plum. They also missed the playoffs.
The goal for 2026 is to maintain all the good they gained and fix that last part.
Now, the Sparks have swapped patience for urgency. This offseason, through free agency, a trade, a boomerang (well, two!), and a potential steal of the draft, they built a roster that looks genuinely dangerous.
“We assembled this team to put ourselves in a position that would commit to the process and has the capacity to go win a championship,” Sparks general manager Raegan Pebley told reporters at Media Day. “What I love about this group is we have a lot of people who have won a championship, who know what it takes to win.”
The Sparks’ marquee offseason acquisition was Nneka Ogwumike. After two seasons in Seattle, the 2016 MVP and 10-time All-Star signed with the Sparks in free agency, returning to the franchise that drafted her No. 1 overall in 2012. Ogwumike averaged 18.3 points, 7.0 rebounds, and 2.3 assists per game for the Storm in 2025 while shooting 51.9% from the field and hitting a career-best 1.5 threes per game at 36.7%. She brings back a level of proven offensive efficiency and a defensive intensity that the Sparks seem to need to make a playoff push.
“It was always see you later, now I’ll see you soon…” Ogwumike posted on social media the morning she announced her return, much to the delight of fans and teammates. The WNBPA president returns after a victorious offseason, where she led the negotiations behind the historic CBA that’s been widely celebrated across the league.
Ogwumike joins last season’s major addition of All-Star Kelsey Plum, who averaged 19.5 points and 5.7 assists last season, the second-highest and the highest of her WNBA career, respectively.
The Sparks trade of Rickea Jackson to Chicago for Ariel Atkins is the offseason move that may generate the most debate. Jackson, who averaged 14.7 points, 3.2 rebounds, and 1.7 assists per game in 2025, is 23 years old and was the fourth overall pick in 2024. Her ceiling isn’t visible yet, and she made her presence known as a dynamic scorer, fan favorite, and queen of the tunnel outfit. Trading her for a player in the later chapters of her career is more of a bet right now than a play for success down the line. Atkins is a career five-time All-Defensive Team selection and an excellent three-point shooter – music to Lynne Roberts’ ears, as a coach who prioritizes shooting and pace, and whose team lacked perimeter defense last season.
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Then there’s the draft. The Sparks didn’t hold a first-round pick heading into April 14, meaning their earliest selection wasn’t until pick No. 20, and they did not expect Ta’Niya Latson to still be available.
The guard played three seasons at Florida State, averaging 25.2 points per game as a junior. She eventually transferred to South Carolina to get WNBA-ready under coach Dawn Staley in her final season. She shot a whopping 45.5% from the floor across her college career. She averaged more than 1.5 steals per season. “Our draft model had her a lot higher than 20,” Roberts said after the selection.
Latson will have plenty of guidance from the cohort of veteran guards the Sparks amassed this offseason. She participated in now teammate Kelsey Plum’s invite-only Dawg Class for elite college guards and has spoken openly about what she learned there. “I learned the most about how she builds her confidence and her mental game,” Latson said. “It made me want to work harder.”
When asked about what Latson’s role will be this season, Roberts said it is “evolving,” noting that it’s impossible to tell where she’ll be in the coming months, and that the lead guard role is the “hardest position to go from college to pro […]. Right now, her role is to absorb and learn as much as she can from KP and Erica Wheeler, two greats that have done it a long time at that lead guard spot.”
She also said she’s been happy with Latson’s point of attack defense and first step, but made repeated comments that it’s still an adjustment period for the young guard.
The Sparks also selected Ohio State’s Chance Gray at No. 24, a 41% three-point shooter from a tough Big Ten who was in the gym when she found out she’d been drafted. “I hesitate to use the word surprise,” Roberts said regarding Gray during training camp. “But she’s doing better than I think any of us even anticipated, in terms of the pace at which she picks things up. An incredible knockdown shooter. Has no fear, and a quick release, which I love. You can tell she put the work in. […] Defensively, she’s picked things up quicker than most rookies.”
Rae Burrell had one of the better offseasons of anyone on the roster, averaging 18 points in her final six Unrivaled games, including a 30-point performance that sent Club Vinyl to the playoffs. She was named to the USA Basketball roster for the FIBA Women’s World Cup Qualifying Tournament. She is not going to be the same player she was last September, which was nothing to scoff at.
The Plum–Ogwumike–Hamby core alone would make most teams nervous. Add in Cameron Brink off the bench, energizing wing Burrell, additional fresh veteran power in Erica Wheeler and Atkins, and the Sparks have an exciting seven-player rotation. That’s before considering the youth of guards Latson, Gray, and sophomore Sania Feagin, who will support at the post position.
On the flip side, the Sparks lost Julie Allemand to the Toronto Tempo, with the first overall pick in the expansion draft, a testament to her reliability, stability and consistency at the point guard position. Allemand finished last season with an assist-to-turnover ratio of 3.1, and the Sparks will miss her. They’ll start Kelsey Plum as their primary ball handler, which, while not new territory, will change the offensive dynamic a bit, as she’ll no longer be able to play off the ball.
“Lynne’s system is really about not having just one clear point guard and a two guard. It’s about having two lead guards out on the floor. It’s that pace and that space. So I think you’re going to see [Plum] playing quite a bit at the point, but you’re going to equally see her playing on the floor where you can’t tell if she’s the point, where she’s the lead guard. Ideally, as the season goes on, it becomes harder and harder to distinguish who is the point guard on the floor because of the versatility,” Pebley told reporters at Media Day.
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Azurá Stevens, who had quietly become one of the most reliable bigs in the league, averaging 12.8 points, 7.9 rebounds, 1.2 steals, and 1.1 blocks in 2025 while shooting 48.8% from the floor and 38% from three, left the Sparks for Chicago, presumably providing Brink with more minutes on an already post-heavy roster.
Despite key departures and some shifts, Coach Roberts says the Sparks’ identity won’t change. Before the preseason win over Portland, Roberts said, “Offensively, we’re always just going to be about pace and space and shot quality. We led the league in pace last year. We were top two or three in every offensive category, which is awesome. We don’t want to stray from that.”
The Sparks led the WNBA in pace in 2025 and finished second in points per game at 85.7. This year, their hope is that the personnel actually match the system Roberts hopes to run. Last year, the Sparks ran fast because they were coached to. This year, they run fast because nearly everyone on the roster is built for it.
The offensive engine starts with Plum, who is at her best in transition, can catch-and-shoot off a curl, pull-up in the secondary break, or attack a scrambled defense before it sets. She mentioned that a major growth point for her in the offseason was finishing in the high paint, “not having to get all the way to the rim.” Ogwumike slots in as the anchor of the half-court offense: she can post, face up, hit the mid-range, or operate as a passer from the elbow when defenses collapse. The combination of Ogwumike and Hamby gives the Sparks two players who can both initiate from the high post and post up, a challenge for defenses that play with a true center.
These lineup combinations are also perfectly structured for a number of deadly pick-and-roll combinations. Plum with two-player combinations where she can get crafty, going downhill to the hoop. Burrell’s athleticism as a ball-handler in space, with Hamby rolling hard or popping to the elbow, was already one of the better actions on this team last year.
The additions of Latson, Atkins, and Gray on the wing give a secondary option for guards coming off the ball screen. Roberts doesn’t need every possession to run through Plum (though there will be games where she’ll undoubtedly want that).
The Sparks’ post play allows them to spread the floor as well as anyone in the league. Brink, Ogwumike, and Hamby are difficult matchups not only on the inside but also outside the 3-point line. The hope is that this spacing will create cleaner looks than the Sparks got a year ago, when opponents could shade help more aggressively because the outside shooting was less consistent.
One major challenge for the Sparks will remain their turnover rate. In both preseason games, the Sparks had 20 or more turnovers. Roberts acknowledged it directly after the team’s win over Portland. “The knife cuts both ways.” Pace-and-space (Roberts’ bread and butter) creates open looks, but it also creates live-ball turnovers if the decision-making isn’t clean. With a new roster finding its footing, that number needs to come down, and fast.
Defensively, the Sparks posted the worst opponent points per game at 88.2 in 2025. “We’ve got to get better, we’ve got to improve,” Roberts told reporters before the Portland game. “Whether it’s transition defense, pick and roll, point of attack, ball pressure, pick and roll coverages, and then finishing with the rebound, we’ve kept it pretty simple at camp.”
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The personnel changes, particularly Atkins and Ogwumike, indicate that it was a huge priority in the offseason. Atkins is a legitimate, switchable stopper who takes assignments personally and applies constant pressure. “I just want to bring energy, it’s my favorite part of the game,” Atkins said. Wheeler, who prides herself on being a defensive “pest,” returns to the Sparks after five seasons away, after five years away. Her season with the Sparks boasted the best numbers of her career: 13.6 points per game.
Brink, a full season removed from surgery, is an incredible shot-alterer when she’s able to avoid foul travel and remain on the court, an area she’s struggled with in the past. She noted that she has worked on her mental toughness in the offseason, and that it’s been a welcome change from focusing only on her knee to really getting to focus on her game again. She was moved to tears in her Media Day interview discussing her injury, and the level of gratitude she felt to be back, with veteran Wheeler reaching out to hold her hand and compliment her on the work she’s done and where she is now.
“We’ve got a great roster of veterans that understand what it takes on that defensive side. That was a big part of our roster. Ariel Atkins brings defensively what we didn’t have last year. Nneka, unbelievable, right? And then Erica Wheeler coming in, and just an absolute bulldog defensively,” Roberts said. “So a lot of it is personnel in terms of improvements, but a lot of it is on me and our staff to continually get better in that space.”
“Our depth and our talent is immense this year, and the mission is clear,” Plum told reporters. “We want to win now.” She went on to say that this is one of the “best training camps” she’s been a part of.
The Sparks open the season on Sunday, May 10, against the reigning WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces, a test that will magnify the strengths and weaknesses of their revamped lineup.
