The potential of Cameron Brink is clear.
Standing at 6-foot-4, she towers over her opponents, and for those who dare to challenge her, they are met with the appropriate force.
Through her first two seasons, Brink has demonstrated that she can be one of the best rim protectors in the WNBA, averaging 1.8 blocks per game.
But, she has played only 34 of a possible 84 games. That’s because Brink tore her ACL after just 15 games during her rookie campaign and didn’t return to play until midway through her second
year in the WNBA.
However, she’s now healthy and ready for Year 3 to become the season where her potential and promise meet production.
“I feel great,“ Brink told Swish Appeal. ”Just been working with our amazing training staff at the Sparks. And just really taking care of my body, and just enjoying the process of it all. So, feeling great.“
How Brink has gotten here is in part due to her focusing on her nutrition. As a younger player during her college days at Stanford, she, like many teenagers, was unconcerned about the food she used as fuel. Now, as a professional athlete trying to establish herself, she’s using Optimum Nutrition to take her game to the next level.
“They’re genuinely a part of my daily routine,” Brink said. “From waking up, I eat my overnight oats with my Gold Standard Whey Protein. Go throughout my workout, and the first thing I have is a protein shake with a carb. Just trying to be really intentional about protein intake, when I’m getting it in cause timing matters.”
The commitment to health doesn’t stop there, as Brink further explained:
They [Optimum Nutrition] also have creatine, which has been a really important part of my supplement regimen. I swear I take like 20,000 pills a day. But it’s great. It’s all worth it in the end because I actually wake up every day feeling really good. It’s a hard lifestyle, playing basketball, pounding on the hardwood every day. So, having them be something that I can actually rely on every day is huge.
Health for Brink has been missing, but even if one assumes her injury problems are a thing of the past, there are still plenty of unanswered questions about what her ceiling is as a player.
Can she sustain the amount of blocks she averages throughout a full WNBA season? Will she be a traditional back-to-the-basket big, or will she modernize and stretch the floor? Under Sparks head coach Lynne Roberts, the 3-pointer took up most of her shot diet. Brink attempted 34 threes, but only converted on 32 percent of them. When it came to shots at the rim, Brink took only 22 in 2025.
“Hopefully, I’m out on the perimeter a little bit more this year, but I feel like I can be a jack of all trades,” Brink said. “If they need me to set ball screens and roll the rim, I’ll do that.”
Even as the WNBA has increased the season to 44 games, with more games coming in future seasons, the regular season is still much shorter than the offseason. For WNBA players, that means development during downtime is even more important, and potentially more impactful, than for pro athletes in virtually any other league.
During this offseason, Brink played in Unrivaled, using her time as a member of Breeze FC to become a better offensive player.
“Unrivaled basketball it’s really just like a big game of pickup, so you have so much freedom to experiment and toy around with your game,” Brink said. “So it was really cool for me, just to develop some more confidence on offense.”
In the 13 games she played in Unrivaled, Brink averaged 10.9 points and 6.2 rebounds. Playing with a plethora of the best women’s basketball players, even in a non-traditional setting, was an iron-sharpening-iron scenario for the Sparks big. So was participating in Team USA’s training camp in early April, which was held in conjunction with the Final Four in Phoenix.
Discussing her most recent USA Basketball experience with Swish Appeal, Brink shared.
Anytime you’re able to be a part of that type of camp and play with people like A’ja Wilson and Sabrina [Ionescu] and all these people that have been where you wanna go, it’s really cool to play alongside them and get tidbits from them. And our court coaches were great. Nate Tibbetts, Steph White, Natalie [Nakase] from Golden State, they’re genuinely just really great to learn from.
Now, with Sparks training camp looming, it’s time for Brink to put together her newfound health, nutrition habits and offensive game to become the player everyone knows she can be.
Los Angeles has been yearning for WNBA success, and if Brink can step up and have a breakout year, then the Sparks, enhanced by a better-than-ever Brink and splashy offseason additions, can crawl out of the basement of the league and re-enter the playoffs as championship contenders.
Brink has done the offseason work necessary for this option to be on the table, and this summer, we’ll see if she can help bring the Sparks back to prominence.
All quotes acquired firsthand in collaboration with Optimum Nutrition.
