The unkindest quip I’ve read about the 2026 Los Angeles Sparks is that their offense mostly devolves into four people standing around while Kelsey Plum dribbles.
Which isn’t much different from my suggestion for how to beat them: Don’t let Plum share the ball. Even if Plum scorches her lone defender, you’re better off.
Consider:
In Plum’s three worst assist games — 2 vs. LV, 4 vs. IND, 6 vs. DAL — the Sparks are 0-3, even though Plum shot a smoking 58% (29-for-50). The rest of the team shot .421 on 64-for-152.
In the Sparks’ other seven games, in which Plum made 57 assists, they are 6-1. The night she made 11 assists vs. Seattle, she shot 35% — doesn’t that sound like a player who figured that it was too much effort beating a double-team but connecting with the open shooter worked?
I don’t like watching these Sparks, whose whole is not yet the sum of their parts. They’ve been at times atrocious defensively, so much so that I wanted to suggest they switch to a zone, because that would force them to defend cooperatively.
What nags me about the Sparks is that they know to avoid an over-reliance on Plum — as early as game #3 of the 2025 season, Plum said that if she had to play 38 minutes for the team to win, then so be it, but she didn’t like the idea. Coach Roberts agreed that this model was not sustainable, but here we are 13 games into the next year, and if Plum played longer than 34:30 (put aside the overtime win last Saturday in Phoenix), Los Angeles is 1-3.
Roberts maintains that Plum doesn’t get enough attention in the MVP conversation. I’ll agree when that when the team asserts itself in the playoff race, especially if the performance holds up that they’re winning when Plum is more a passer than shooter.
Los Angeles visits Golden State Monday, so I told two chess classes not to expect me.
I don’t like watching the Valkyries, either. Partly because my seat is terrible — third row behind the visiting bench sounds great, but I can see better on the JumboTron overhead.
I hate watching basketball broadcasts, because the people who are talking are not helpful. Television doesn’t need those people at all — when baseball on the radio was the only game in town, then you needed someone who could imagine the action on the field based on tickertape reports. When television became king, it was an idiot who said: Yeah, we still need someone to tell people what they can see for themselves.
On screen — whether the JumboTron at Chase Center or on my phone at home — Golden State sometimes deserves the highest praise I can give a team about its defense, that they look like the movie version of the 1980 Olympics “miracle on ice” hockey team. In the movie, they skate in a flawless togetherness, and the Valkyries occasionally share that effect. When the 2005 Monarchs won the championship, their “white line” defense got most of the credit, which was based on drawing ballhandlers into spaces with a wall of defenders. That’s what Los Angeles is in for Monday night, when Golden State does it right.