The 2026 WNBA season hasn’t gone the way the Sparks envisioned.
Once again, the Sparks are a losing team and destined to miss the playoffs for the sixth consecutive season. All this losing, especially when they expected to be a winning team, has forced changes in Los Angeles.
Earlier this month, the Sparks parted ways with general manager Raegan Pebley, and now, with the trade deadline on Sunday, they have to decide if more moves need to happen.
There have been reports that Plum is not expected to re-sign
with the Sparks next year, and there are also rumors linking Cameron Brink to the Tempo.
No big player transactions have occurred, but it certainly sounds like everything is on the table.
On Wednesday, LA Times columnist Bill Plaschke wrote about the state of the team and spoke with Farhan Zaidi, an advisor to Sparks owner Mark Walter, about the franchise’s approach for what’s left of this year.
“We pushed in a lot of chips this year, and we had good reason to do that, but the reality is it hasn’t gone as we’d hoped or expected,” said Farhan Zaidi, special advisor to Sparks’ owner Mark Walter. “Now we have to be open for anything. Everything has to be on the table for us. We have to take a long-term perspective rather than focusing on the rest of the season.”
During the offseason, the Sparks made big win-now moves like trading Rickea Jackson for Ariel Atkins and bringing back Nneka Ogwumike. Kelsey Plum even took less than the supermax to make these moves financially possible for LA to execute.
It hasn’t worked.
The Sparks are now 10-17 and stuck in limbo. They are five games back of a playoff spot, making the postseason a long shot, and they are five and a half games better than the worst team in the WNBA, which means a high lottery pick is also unlikely.
In Plaschke’s piece, Zaidi acknowledged that something has to give.
“We have to be realistic where we are,” he said. “We don’t want to be that team stuck in the middle.”
The clock is ticking on the Sparks.
If they are going to blow it up and do something radical like moving Plum, it must happen now. The trade deadline is on Sunday, Aug. 2 at 3:00 p.m. ET. If they don’t do anything by then, they’ll have to finish out the year with what they have and work towards improvement in the offseason.
At this juncture, with so many games left, that seems unwise. The Sparks are open for business, now they need to get a deal done and start heading in the right direction.
You can follow Edwin on Twitter at @ECreates88 or on Bluesky at @ecreates88.bsky.social.
