Free agency, an increasingly frenzied, consequential period in the WNBA calendar, opened with a three-team blockbuster trade last week that shook up the landscape of the league.
The framework for the deal, which sent three-time All-Star Kelsey Plum to the Los Angeles Sparks and six-time All-Star Jewell Loyd to the Las Vegas Aces, had reportedly been in place for weeks. The Seattle Storm and the Sparks were haggling over the price of moving Loyd, who had requested a trade from Seattle in the offseason. In the end, the Sparks forked over the no. 2 pick in the 2025 draft. Here’s how the deal shook out for all three parties:
Aces incoming: Loyd and the no. 13 pick in the 2025 draft
Aces outgoing: Plum and their 2026 first-round pick
Storm incoming: The no. 2 pick in the 2025 draft, the Aces’ 2026 first-round pick, and Li Yueru
Storm outgoing: Loyd, the no. 9 pick in the 2025 draft, and the Sparks’ 2026 second-round pick
Sparks incoming: Plum, the no. 9 pick in the 2025 draft, and the Storm’s 2026 second-round pick
Sparks outgoing: The nos. 2 and 13 picks in the 2025 draft and Li
In a peculiar twist, the rise of splashy offseason moves—still a relatively new phenomenon in the WNBA—has coincided with the darkest period in the storied history of the Los Angeles Sparks, the league’s second-biggest market. Franchise pillar and all-time great Candace Parker, who was infamously benched in a 2019 playoff elimination game, left in 2021. So did Chelsea Gray, who departed for the Las Vegas Aces to pursue another championship. Last February, Nneka Ogwumike left Los Angeles for the Storm. While everyone else improved, the Sparks regressed, falling down the pecking order of attractive free agency destinations. In an era they should have owned, they somehow became more irrelevant than ever before.
Until now.
There’s reason to believe that Sunday’s trade could tip the balance of power back in L.A.’s favor. This is a timeline-altering, franchise-shifting move by the Sparks, a once-storied franchise that has fallen on hard times. The Sparks and Plum are making a big bet on each other, and themselves.
Plum has never been one to shy away from a challenge. She led the Washington Huskies to the Final Four in college and set the NCAA women’s all-time scoring record (later broken by Caitlin Clark). She struggled to transition to the pros but eventually found a way to survive—and thrive—in the WNBA, using her low center of gravity to barrel through defenders like a bowling ball while annoying them endlessly on the other end. On the Aces, she won two titles alongside the reigning MVP, A’ja Wilson, and Gray, one of the game’s best playmakers.
After back-to-back Finals runs in 2022 and 2023 and the Olympics in 2024, there were games and matchups last season when the 30-year-old Plum’s legs looked fatigued and her lack of size became an insurmountable disadvantage, particularly against the brawny New York Liberty backcourt. But there was never a moment you couldn’t at least call her a pest.
There’s a reason that Aces coach Becky Hammon, berating her team during their Game 2 loss during this last year’s semifinals, locked eyes with Plum—and it’s not because she was particularly upset with her. “I wasn’t yelling at Kelsey Plum. I was yelling at the group,” Hammon said, according to Callie Fin of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “She just happens to give me great eye contact when I yell. She looks me dead in the eye.”
Plum embraces intensity and accountability. “In any drill, she wants to win,” said Natalie Nakase, a former Aces assistant who is now the head coach of the Golden State Valkyries. “She’s competing against herself.” Plum famously picked up Clark from full court in the All-Star Game. After her early struggles in the league, she created the Dawg Class, a program for college guards looking to make it into the WNBA, filling the developmental void her career could have fallen victim to.
The Sparks will be banking not only on Plum’s ability to morph into the de facto no. 1 scoring option but also on the hope that her attitude could influence the hearts, minds, and defensive stances of her younger teammates, in a locker room that could use veteran leadership, especially after the retirement of Layshia Clarendon. It’s not a full franchise facelift, but it’s a start.
That said, I can’t help but wonder whether this is a shortsighted attempt to fast-track the Sparks’ return to relevancy, after they realized they were late to a party they should have been dominating.
When Bill Plaschke suggested that the Sparks were behind the times back in September, Magic Johnson—a member of the Sparks’ six-person ownership group—agreed: “Everybody should be mad at the Sparks,” said Johnson, vowing to get more involved. Less than a week later, two-time WNBA Coach of the Year Curt Miller was fired. Lynne Roberts, tapped to replace Miller, is a promising, analytically minded hire out of the Pac-12, where Plum once dominated, and is likely a better fit for a team that’s developing young talent, but she’s also a rookie head coach. Plum is also seven years older than Cameron Brink and Rickea Jackson, the Sparks’ no. 2 and no. 4 picks in the 2024 draft. The Sparks have designs on a new state-of-the-art practice facility, but they’ve yet to announce a location or a timeline. There are lots of plans; now we need to see the execution.
Plum has indicated that she’s willing to sign in Los Angeles long term, but she’s also entering a completely different culture than the one in Las Vegas. The Aces’ $40 million practice facility was the first to be built exclusively for a WNBA team, and the perks in Vegas are so good that they’ve triggered investigations from the league office. Until pen hits paper on a long-term deal, consider this a yearlong audition for a team that just made a big-time swing while its infrastructure is still loading.
Practically the entire league will be entering free agency in 2026, in anticipation of a new collective bargaining agreement that will almost certainly exponentially increase player salaries. In this context, keeping the 2025 no. 2 pick would have given the Sparks the ability to enter free agency with three young cornerstones on rookie deals under the new salary cap, theoretically positioning them for a bigger splash.
To give Los Angeles credit, though, college players are anticipating a cap spike as well, which may water down the talent in the 2025 draft. ESPN’s Alexa Philippou reported that the Sparks were ultimately “uncertain about who would be available at the No. 2 pick.”
The Sparks’ decision to go big in free agency reminds me a little of their NBA counterparts. There are notes of Lakers exceptionalism here, a cocktail of delusion and audacity born from the fact that they are, indeed, mixing with rare ingredients: lights, cameras, palm trees, and the sort.
You could feel that bubble burst when the Sparks didn’t get the no. 1 pick in the lottery this year, which would have allowed them to draft Paige Bueckers. Bueckers’s camp seemed equally deflated, with Howard Megdal of The IX reporting that WNBA talent evaluators said there was a “90% to 200%” chance that she’d try to force herself off the Dallas Wings.
If we read the tea leaves here, it’s possible that the Sparks’ valuation of the no. 2 pick means that those efforts will fail. Bueckers could ultimately opt to return to college for another year and declare for the draft in 2026, signing a more lucrative rookie contract then, after the new CBA goes into effect. Olivia Miles, Azzi Fudd, Lauren Betts, and Rori Harmon are likely weighing similar decisions, which could significantly water down the talent in this draft. Kiki Iriafen, a true senior, would add to L.A.’s frontcourt logjam. So would Dominique Malonga. Sonia Citron, despite being the best 3-and-D player in the draft, doesn’t project as the kind of star talent Plum already is.
Whether this trade will pan out as a hasty attempt to regain relevancy or the first move to reestablish Los Angeles as a key player in the WNBA hierarchy is a question only time can answer.
The Sparks, well positioned to be a power player in the WNBA’s era of player power because of their location and market, are polishing the dust off their trophies and announcing their return. The arc of the league, now more than ever, will be determined by the players. Whether or not that ultimately benefits the Sparks is in Kelsey Plum’s hands.
This article originally misstated which team Bill Plaschke suggested was behind the times. It was the Sparks, not the Liberty.
