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Coming into the 2025 WNBA season, Los Angeles Sparks head coach Lynne Roberts knew that Azurá Stevens was going to be a perfect fit for her system. Roberts was looking to implement a style of play that was successful during her tenure as head coach of the Utah Utes. That is, an uptempo style emphasizing versatility and predicated on three-point shots and getting to the basket.
Back on Aug. 7, before the Sparks faced off against the Connecticut Sun at home, Roberts recalled conversations she had with Azurá Stevens even before the season began about how she was going to thrive in this system.
“With her, yes, I had those conversations of, ‘you’re going to thrive in this because you’re going to have the green light to shoot, and that’s where your confidence comes from,” Roberts said. “But what you’ve seen, because she’s had success with that, is she’s way more aggressive defensively. She’s rebounding better. She’s rotating defensively, it’s feeding her other areas of the game. . she’s a perfect fit for what we’re doing.”
Stevens is now in her third season with the Sparks, and is putting up some of the best numbers of her career. When she plays well, the team often does well. Her versatility in terms of being able to step out and shoot the three, as well as being able to score around the basket, has been crucial in several of the team’s wins this season.
Stevens was also confident that her skill-set would be able to translate well in Roberts’ system.
“It’s threes and layups, that’s pretty much a lot of my game,” Stevens told ClutchPoints in an exclusive interview. “I think just being able to have an offense where it’s five-out, spread out, it’s really looking to attack and from the three-point line, that really suits my game.”
Azurá Stevens’ importance for the Sparks
Stevens has appeared in all 35 games so far for the Sparks this season. She’s playing a career-high 28.8 minutes per game and averaging 14.1 points, 7.9 rebounds, 2.0 assists, 1.2 steals and 1.2 blocked shots, all of which are career-best numbers. She’s shooting 50.3 percent from the field, 40.9 percent from the three-point line and 78.2 percent from the free-throw line. Her field goal percentage and three-point percentage are also career-highs.
But it’s not just Stevens’ scoring and rebounding ability that’s been key for the Sparks. She’s become arguably the team’s best passer in the high post with a knack for being able to find cutters along the baseline. She’s also developed a strong chemistry with Dearica Hamby playing a high-low game.
While being able to see the floor and find her teammates is a skill, a big reason why Stevens is able to do so comes from something much more ordinary and fundamental. Watch basketball at any level and you’ll see a tendency for players, especially bigs, who will put the ball down low and expose themselves to quick defensive hands.
Contrast that with Stevens who keeps the ball high and away from prying defenders as she surveys the court. It’s something that’s been ingrained in her since she was playing in college at UConn.
“We worked on that a lot at UConn, just keeping the ball up even when you get on a pick and roll. Obviously if you bring it down, you give more opportunity for guards to come in and kind of swipe at it,” Stevens said. “So I guess it’s just a habit I picked up coming in there, and kind of kept it with me. When I keep the ball up, it’s a lot harder for players to try to steal it, especially with my height.”
“It’s sometimes easier to hit the high-low pass when it’s already up in the air versus having to bring it up,” Stevens continued. “It’s little things like that you learn along the way, and you just kind of keep it into your game.”
Stevens, along with Dearica Hamby and Rae Burrell, is one of the longest tenured players on the Sparks’ roster. She signed with the team as a free agent ahead of the 2023 season, and is one of a select group of players on the roster that has a championship ring.
She played a crucial role for the Chicago Sky off the bench during their 2021 title run, and her experience is a key reason why she’s one of the most respected voices in the Sparks’ locker room. Last season, Stevens gradually took on more of a leadership role with the team, and it’s something she’s continuing to work on this year.
“I don’t know if I’ve been as vocal as I guess I should be, but it’s more trying to lead by example and be consistent,” Stevens said. “Those were the vets that impacted me the most when I was coming up, was the vets that were consistent. Not always saying stuff, but you could see they were pros every day. The way they attacked the game, just being consistent. So I just try to bring that every day.”
With the regular season winding down, the Sparks have been playing much better basketball than they were in the first half of the year. The team is firmly in the playoff mix with nine games left on their schedule. They trail the Seattle Storm by half a game, and they hold the current tiebreaker in the head-to-head season series.
It’s been the team’s resilient mentality that they’ve developed along the way that Stevens sees as the main catalyst for the Sparks’ improved play.
“I think we just built a lot of resiliency. I think that early on in the season, teams would punch and we would sort of crumble,” Stevens said. “But I think since All-Star we’ve been able to withstand different runs that teams have had. It hasn’t always turned out in a win, but I think we’ve showed a lot of resiliency in that. Our defense has gotten better. I think we need to be more consistent with it but I think overall, our defensive approach has gotten better from the beginning of the season.”
