LOS ANGELES — Kelsey Plum participated in full practice today for the first time in five weeks, attacking the rim and looking every part of the Sparks team that she did before being sidelined after Los Angeles’ June 21 loss to the New York Liberty.
As Sunday’s trade deadline looms, Plum’s name has emerged as the most-discussed online. Before she was sidelined, she was averaging 23.9 points per game, second in the WNBA. She had career bests in field goal percentage and three point percentage, and was sixth in the league in assists per game. She was firing on all cylinders.
After Thursday’s practice, Plum told reporters that on Sunday, the plan is for her to be on a minutes restriction and come off the bench — somewhere she’s thrived in the past. “I’m going to be where my feet are. I play for the Sparks. So on Sunday, I’m going to suit up, and I’m going to give them fill-in-the-blank minutes of hell,” Plum joked about her minutes restrictions.
Regarding playing as the Sparks’ sixth player, Plum expressed a level of excitement. “I have to credit Bill Laimbeer,” she said, referring to the Las Vegas Aces head coach under whom she won the Sixth Player of the Year Honor in 2021. “He was the one that put me on the bench, it really helped my game. For USA Basketball, that’s something that I’ve done really well is like coming off the bench and just bringing energy. I don’t care what happens on Sunday, like in terms of the points or things like that. I’m just grateful to be back playing basketball.”
She went on to discuss how challenging it’s been to watch this team from the sideline, but that it’s helped her gain some perspective on this particular group. “I’m not trying to stop anyone’s momentum,” she said, referring to her teammates that have picked up the slack in her absence. “So just coming back and filling the gaps that are needed, you know I specialize in coming off the bench.”
This all comes with a huge asterisk. While Plum — true to her nature — was certainly more interested in talking about Sunday’s matchup with the Portland Fire, how it feels to be back out there and the growth she’s seen her teammates, it was inevitable that the discussion quickly turned to where she’ll find herself following the trade deadline.
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The Sparks have dug themselves into a deep hole in her absence, now sitting at 10-17. It makes a lot of sense for the Sparks to trade Plum. She’s on a one year deal, and there’s no question she could help a team on the bubble make a deep playoff run. With only 17 games left to go, a Sparks playoff berth is looking increasingly unachievable. Instead of risking losing her during free agency, it makes sense for the Sparks to see if they can add some younger pieces to their roster, and more importantly, some draft picks.
“You have to be where your feet are,” Plum said, when asked about where she thinks she’ll be after Sunday. “There’s a lot of things that are in the unknown, and those are things outside of my control. You know, for me, my control is to be here to play the highest level basketball I can possibly play and help my team win games.”
When asked what she “wants” to happen, she doubled down. “I want to help my team win games.”
Head coach Lynne Roberts didn’t do much to quiet the speculation. Asked about the state of the roster ahead of Tuesday’s loss to New York, she declined to rule anything out.
“When we’ve been healthy, we’ve been good,” Roberts said. “Things have not shaken out how we wanted them to, so we need to evaluate everything. I’ve been in communication with the front office, and I think that for where we want to be, everything has to be evaluated.”
While she declined to dig into specific players, as expected, she repeated “we are evaluating everything.”
With the trade deadline happening just 30 minutes before tip off against the Portland Fire on Sunday, the Sparks are in a funny position. Plum needs to act like she’s playing — whether she is or not, and whether anything is near-final or not. It’s a challenging spot to be in.
Sparks veteran leader Nneka Ogwumike told The IX Sports that the only way to stay steady through the unknown is to “Just stay focused, and staying with each other. It’s very important to lock in with who we got, today. Every day it could be a little different. There’s a lot of unknowns when it comes to the business of basketball, but at the end of the day, we want to be able to be transparent and respectful of each other, and just say locked into what we got going on with who’s around.”
So how do players do that? “Stay true to the facts and reality of our situation,” per Ogwumike.
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Ogwumike also acknowledged that due to the growth and visibility of the league, it’s getting harder to tune out the noise online, but that the team just has to come in, do their jobs and remain professional, despite chatter surrounding the state of their players. “It can affect people very differently,” she explained. “I do my best not to speak with the privilege of my experience and situation, but to be a resource if they have questions.”
Roberts doubled down on Plum’s statements regarding Sunday. “You have to focus on what you can control, and what I can control is getting our team ready to play Portland and be ready to play. That’s about all I have control over,” she told reporters after practice. “And as a player, same thing. You don’t have a whole lot of control, so you just got to be where your feet are and be ready to compete. This is business. This is our job. We got to be ready to do our job.”
The Sparks will play at Portland on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. PT. But who will play in that game is still up in the air.
