Sparks Are Ready to Hit Court Again
The Sparks resume the WNBA season tonight against San Antonio after the league’s month-long Olympic hiatus.
And they return to Staples Center in first place in the Western Conference, sporting the league’s best record at 19-7.
Otherwise, the Sparks -- and the rest of the league -- are in uncharted waters. No team can be exactly sure how it will respond to the shutdown, even though the players who did not go to Greece have been practicing regularly the last two weeks.
The Sparks, winners of 11 of their last 12, including five in a row leading up to the break, have some other issues as well.
The roster was already depleted by a season-ending knee injury to DeLisha Milton-Jones, then took another hit when rookies Laura Macchi and Raffaella Masciadri had to return to their Italian League teams for a tournament. They could be gone until Sept. 25, making them unavailable before the first round of the playoffs.
“We don’t know yet how we’ll look,” guard Tamecka Dixon said. “But it was good to have that month, to get some things situated. We tweaked some of our plays, looking to develop other scoring options. We worked hard on defending pick-and-rolls because we were having problems with that the last few games before the break.”
Added guard Nikki Teasley, “We like to say we didn’t have a month off, we had a month to try and get better, to continue on the road to a championship.... We’re confident on how we’re playing right now, and getting Lisa [Leslie] back will be that bonus.”
They don’t have her back yet, though. Leslie, who returned to Los Angeles from Athens on Sunday, was given two days off to rest and reset her body clock. Coach Karleen Thompson said Leslie wouldn’t have trouble picking up recent adjustments.
“We weren’t going to have her do anything these last two days anyway,” Thompson said. “We’re fortunate that Lisa catches on quickly. Plus we wanted the other players to get the confidence they need when we don’t have Lisa in the game. So it’s been good to have the rest of them on the court when Lisa’s not there.”
General Manager Penny Toler did fill one of the roster openings, signing forward Monique Coker, and is considering one more addition.
Even so, the Sparks have to hit their stride immediately.
Behind them in the standings is Seattle, trailing by only 1 1/2 games. The Storm has nine games left, the Sparks eight. They have two against each other, Friday at Staples Center and the season finale in Seattle on Sept. 18.
They have split the first two meetings. Should either team sweep the last two games, that might be the difference in finishing with the league’s best record and earning home-court advantage throughout the playoffs. The Sparks are 10-1 at home, the Storm 11-2. Los Angeles has six home games, Seattle four.
Thompson, however, is not thrilled with that schedule, wary of the Sparks falling into a comfort zone.
“I think I’d almost rather be on the road,” she said. “Playing at home, you have so many kinds of distractions. We’ve been pushing that issue of being focused a lot. Getting the priorities straight. Because everyone’s making that final push in to the playoffs.”
The Sparks won’t coast into a high playoff spot. Of their eight remaining opponents, only 6-20 San Antonio is playing out the string. The others -- Seattle, Phoenix, Detroit, Minnesota and Sacramento -- are battling for either playoff spots or position.