After grabbing their first win of the season against the Washington Mystics last week, the Los Angeles Sparks have now lost consecutive games to bring their record to 1-5. Their most recent loss came on Sunday against the visiting Dallas Wings, 84-83. While the Sparks were unable to get a win, one of the major talking points following the game was the continued development of rookie center Cameron Brink.
Brink turned in the best performance of her young WNBA career so far. She finished with a game-high 21 points, two rebounds, three assists and three blocked shots. She shot 7-of-12 from the field, 3-of-6 from the three-point line and 4-of-4 from the free throw line. She scored seven of the Sparks first nine points.
She also continued to make a strong impact on the defensive end despite being saddled with foul trouble for most of the game. Brink ended up with five fouls and Sparks head coach Curt Miller trusted her to stay on the court in crunch time despite the risk of fouling out. Adjusting to the physicality of the WNBA and how the game is called is something the Brink acknowledged postgame, is still a work in progress.
“I think it's just something I need to continue to adjust with. The coaches and my teammates have given me grace so I'm just going to work through it,” Brink said. “Obviously I think there were fouls that didn't go our way. There was one play where I was just completely tackled, like blindsided out of nowhere. And so that led to a frustration foul on my end. So that's where maturity comes in, where I need to get better. But that means a lot that he [Miller] trusts me and I'll just continue to show him that he can continue to trust me.”
Through the Sparks first five games, Brink has been averaging 10.8 points, 5.8 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 1.2 steals and 3.2 blocked shots with splits of 52.8 percent from the field, 42.9 percent from the three-point line and 90.9 percent from the free-throw line.
Sparks bench continues to be a work in progress
In addition to Cameron Brink's big game, the Sparks second unit had their best outing of the season so far. With starting point guard Layshia Clarendon out due to a head injury and the starters struggling to generate consistent offense, Curt Miller opted to go with a bench unit of Aari McDonald, Zia Cooke, Stephanie Talbot and Li Yueru alongside starter Dearica Hamby in the fourth quarter.
The bench ended up giving the team a jolt and rallied back from a double-digit deficit to ultimately take a brief lead late in the fourth quarter. The bench has been inconsistent early on with rookie wing Rickea Jackson being the lone source of consistency.
But this group played very well with Cooke's defensive pressure on Wings star Arike Ogunbowale, McDonald's slashing ability getting into the paint, Talbot's reads off the dribble leading to finding open teammates and Yueru's size in the paint rebounding and getting easy baskets.
Following the game, Miller highlighted what he would like to see from that second unit consistently on a game to game basis.
“Energy, effort and growth within our schemes. . .just the growth and the scheming on both sides of the ball, have less and less slippage. I'm not asking them to be perfect, but less and less slippage in terms of what game plans we're trying to achieve,” Miller said. “Ultimately their energy and effort are what we're looking for when they come in, keep sparking us with the intangibles that way is really important.”
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