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LOS ANGELES – Prior to the Los Angeles Sparks’ game against the Atlanta Dream on Sunday, head coach Curt Miller said he felt like Rickea Jackson was on her way to becoming a superstar player. While wins have been hard to come by for the Sparks this season, Jackson has catapulted her name into the conversation for top rookies in the WNBA.
Following the Sparks’ loss to the Dream, Jackson was presented with Miller’s comments and was asked for her opinion on if she considers herself a star already. Although she acknowledged that she has things she needs to improve upon, she concurred that her current trajectory is that of a star player.
“I feel like if Coach Curt says that, then that means I am because he doesn’t say that about just anybody. But I do feel like I’m a star. I feel like I’m a growing star. I feel like I’m never content and I feel like that’s what makes me a star. I feel like I want to continue to get better,” Jackson said. “When they tell me, ‘I need you to be better at this,’ I literally try to fix it in the next game. I feel like just being a sponge and wanting to get better with each and every practice, I feel like that is what’s going to take me over the top.
“I’m not 100 percent where I want to be, but I feel like I’m a growing star. I don’t feel like I’m 100 percent there yet, but just continuing to stay with it, listen to my coaches and teammates, I feel like one day I’m going to get there.”
Rickea Jackson has become a go-to player for the Sparks
The No. 4 overall pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft, Rickea Jackson’s development this season as a rookie has been one of the top storylines in the league.
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As the season has progressed, Jackson has become more of a focal point for the Sparks offense. In fact, Miller has begun to see the difference in how opposing teams prepared for Jackson earlier this year compared to how the Dream guarded her on Sunday.
“Rickea is going to be a team scorer even on off nights, and you’re going to see her in the 20s consistently as we go up,” Miller said. “She got more attention from Atlanta, that’s a credit to her that there’s now scouting report attention to her. And that’s been now her next step. She’s an asterisk, a 1A on talking about opponents scouting and what they want to do. Players that have earned that right then learn from that.”
Jackson has appeared in all 32 games for the Sparks this season. She began the year coming off the bench, but by the sixth game of the season she was in the starting lineup.
She’s been averaging 12.6 points, 3.8 rebounds and 1.4 assists with splits of 46.6 percent shooting from the field, 37.2 percent shooting from the three-point line and 77.5 percent shooting from the free-throw line. She leads the WNBA in most games by a rookie with at least 15 points on 60+ percent shooting as per I Talk Hoops, and she’s the only rookie averaging double figures in scoring while shooting better than 45 percent.
She also reached a Sparks milestone on Sunday when she joined elite company such as Lisa Leslie, Candace Parker and Nneka Ogwumike as the only four players in team history to post a rookie season scoring at least 400 points.
While it might be a little too late for Jackson to get serious consideration for the league’s Rookie of the Year Award, she’s without a doubt an All-Rookie First Team player and a legitimate franchise cornerstone for the Sparks.
