After Wednesday’s road win over the Seattle Storm, the Los Angeles Sparks sit at 6-6, smack in the middle of the WNBA standings. But the story of their quarter-by-quarter play looks different, and the 6-6 overall record doesn’t capture how many times the Sparks have been genuinely good, and then stalled. Measured in quarters, their record stands at 19-28-1, including 3-9 in second quarters.
There have been plenty of positives for the Sparks thus far in the 2026 season. Franchise cornerstone Kelsey Plum is averaging a career-high 24.8 points per game, shooting 55.8% from the floor, nearly 10 percentage points higher than her previous career best. Nneka Ogwumike has been prolific, surpassing Hall of Famer Tamika Catchings for fifth on the WNBA’s all-time scoring list and becoming the Sparks’ franchise leader in field goals made.
Dearica Hamby became just the seventh player in Sparks history to reach 1,000 franchise rebounds, getting there faster than any player aside from Candace Parker or Lisa Leslie. Ariel Atkins, Rae Burrell and Erica Wheeler have had moments of spark off the bench, as has Cameron Brink, including a 15-point performance on 71.4% shooting in only 18 minutes against the Storm. As a team, the Sparks are fifth in the league with 88.7 points per game, only 2.4 points behind the first-place team. They’re shooting a fourth-best 46.4% from the floor.
While the Sparks have boasted noteworthy individual and team accomplishments this summer, it’s rarely all coming together at once.
When asked ahead of the Storm matchup about her team’s inability to put together what head coach Lynne Roberts has repeatedly called a “complete game,” Roberts said, “We kind of figured out who we are, who we aren’t, in terms of what our potential is, and you know, I think offensively, we’re fine. We just have to be more consistent defensively, and that’s just a choice. The discipline to do it, that’s what I’m looking for. I thought we did a great job against Portland in that regard … but we’ve got to put together some consistent games back-to-back-to-back to really start to have some confidence in that area.”
The opening loss of the season to Las Vegas set the tone and established a pattern. The Sparks trimmed an early deficit to only 42-41 at halftime, before the Aces opened the third quarter with a 12-4 spurt, outscoring the Sparks 33-18 in the period. The game was decided before the fourth quarter started.
After the loss to the Fever on May 13, after which Roberts said, “we won the second half, we just had a really bad second quarter” she acknowledged, “we’ve gotta put 40 minutes together.”
Plum added, “We got to show up to play when it’s the first quarter. If you ever notice the pattern in the W, talent is pretty spread out across the board. The hardest team playing wins a lot of the time. You got to make shots and stuff, but it’s kind of magical when you play hard, you kind of end up making shots. So I think that we have to have the intensity that we had in that run for a sustained game.”
After the team’s win over the Washington Mystics at the end of May, Robers told reporters, “It took us a quarter to kind of snap out of it, or wake up, or whatever you want to say defensively, to where we were aggressive, and I thought we did a really good job in that second quarter, and then the second half was a back and forth.”
Even on their best nights, though, the Sparks are missing the consistent throughline that can allow them to take their starters out, run new options and try a variety of lineups. In the Storm victory on Wednesday, the Sparks allowed an 11-0 Storm run at the open of the third quarter, allowing the Storm to take a 52-43 lead, before clawing their way back to the win.
“Sometimes you got to win ugly, and you can gain some confidence and momentum from that,” Roberts said after the game.
“I put a lot of juice in the third quarter to try to make sure we got back our lead,” added Plum.
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Their first and third quarter differentials solely from a +/- perspective are both -9. Second and fourth? Only -1 and -2. They’re not coming out of their game breaks strong, and are leaving themselves with a lot to make up for and fight back from.
The inconsistency quarter-to-quarter has resulted in requiring late-game heroics from Plum, who currently leads the league in fourth quarter points with 75, or 8.3 points per fourth quarter. The Sparks average 4.7 turnovers in the first quarter, tied for first in the league, despite ranking sixth overall in turnovers per game.
After the loss to the Dallas Wings on June 6, Roberts repeated the theme, “We just didn’t win the last three, four minutes … and it’s a game of runs. They made the last run.”
The Sparks have 32 games left to figure it out. A team with their talent and their flaws sitting at .500 is not a cause for panic. It is, however, a warning. In a Western Conference that will have no mercy for half-finished performances in October, the version of the Sparks that disappears in the third or fourth quarter won’t get very far.
