Los Angeles Sparks fifth-year wing Rae Burrell has quietly started racking up points consistently.
She’s been a double-digit scorer with regularity. In 23 of 39 appearances this year, Burrell has reached 13-plus points, including in seven of her last eight games, with the one exception being a 12-point outing.
The last eight games also featured her career-high of 28 points on Aug. 13 and an average of 19.4 points per game across the stretch. On the season, she has 10 20-pieces and 30 double-digit scoring
efforts.
If you don’t count Kelsey Plum, who, due to injury, didn’t take the court for LA beyond June 21 before being traded to the Phoenix Mercury, Burrell’s 14.6 points per game rank second on the Sparks behind only Nneka Ogwumike and just a tick ahead of Dearica Hamby, a legit star who even finished ninth in MVP voting last year.
So it’s safe to say that 26-year-old Burrell has arrived as a star in her own right. To back up that claim, she is shooting 37.6 percent from 3 with 62 makes and 51.7 percent on 2-point field goals.
A better future for the Sparks starts with Rae Burrell
Burrell’s accomplishments this year have been for a Sparks team that has fallen from No. 5 in ESPN’s preseason power rankings to currently tied for 10th place. No other WNBA squad has had a more disappointing season.
This offseason, the Sparks brought 35-year-old Ogwumike back to LA, signed 34-year-old Erica Wheeler and traded 25-year-old Rickea Jackson to the Chicago Sky in exchange for 29-year-old Ariel Atkins. The message was clear: LA wanted to win now and get Ogwumike a second championship to go along with the one she won for them in 2016.
They hoped to, at least, make the playoffs for the first time since 2020. Instead, they lost two of their three first-round draft picks from 2024 and 2025 (Jackson and Sarah Ashlee Barker) and have nothing to show for it. They are left with only Cameron Brink (2024’s No. 2 pick) and Burrell (2022’s No. 9 pick) from their most recent youth movement.
Of Burrell and Brink, Burrell has been featured more prominently in head coach Lynne Roberts’ 2026 rotation, starting 31 times compared to one time for Brink, and playing 28.9 minutes per game compared to Brink’s 19 minutes per game.
Brink, who clearly faces high expectations as a No. 2 pick, has still managed to show promise in less minutes. In addition to averaging a solid 9.6 points per game, she has Burrell beat in the categories you’d expect her to excel at: rebounding (five boards per game) and shot-blocking (1.7 swats per game—good for third in the W). Given more minutes, perhaps Brink can reach Burrell’s level of contribution, and perhaps together they can form the star tandem of LA’s future.
For now, Burrell is the more intriguing story. Both entered 2026 with career-high scoring averages of 7.5 points per game, and Brink actually had the higher career-best minutes per game mark. So Burrell has taken a bigger step forward.
You can now feel free to call her one of the most reliable players on the Sparks, and LA fans can fantasize about even bigger scoring numbers from her in the future because she has demonstrated she has all the tools.
Sweet Baby Rae showed her star potential at Tennessee and Unrivaled
Of course, she already demonstrated she had all the tools as a collegian playing for Tennessee.
She’s a 6-foot-2 wing who can do it all offensively: handle the ball, drive, finish at the basket and shoot the 3. She’s got height and length and a dream skill set, even if she only truly showed it off in one of her four college seasons.
That was her junior year in which she averaged 16.8 points per game. When a sophomore, she played significantly fewer minutes and averaged 10.5 points per game. As a senior, she wasn’t 100 percent due to a leg injury and averaged 12.3 points per game.
Now, all indications are that she is just getting warmed up and has plenty of great scoring seasons ahead of her.
Another place where she showcased her skills before this WNBA season was at Unrivaled. This past season, she was good for 12.8 points per game for Vinyl BC, including turning in a 30-point performance. She made 17 3s at a clip of 40.5 percent, good for fourth in the league, albeit on very low volume.
Burrell also played during the inaugural Unrivaled season, with Sparks legend and Unrivaled color commentator Lisa Leslie giving her the nickname “Sweet Baby Rae.”
Will LA value Burrell as a building block?
Burrell’s 2026 Unrivaled season inspired our editor-in-chief, Cat Ariail, to select her with the No. 2 pick in our mock expansion draft. Cat viewed Burrell as the player with the highest upside.
She has certainly begun to prove Cat right. The sky seems to be the limit for Burrell moving forward. In what has been a sad season for the Sparks, her improvement and consistency have been bright spots.
She becomes a restricted free agent after this season. With Ogwumike retiring, the Sparks will be looking to reset yet again. They would be wise to hang on to Sweet Baby Rae by matching whatever the highest bidder offers her.
