Oh yeah, Cameron Brink! The Los Angeles Sparks’ No. 2 pick in 2024 last played in the WNBA over a year ago, when she tore her ACL in the first quarter of a game against the Sun. There's not really a convenient time for a torn ACL, but the timing of this one was rough: The injury happened just weeks before she was set to go to the Paris Olympics as a member of the U.S. 3x3 basketball team, an opportunity that once delighted her to the point of tears. It also cut short a promising rookie season in which she’d looked like she’d soon be among the best defensive players in the league.
In the final days of July, some thrilling news popped up on the Sparks' injury report: Brink was upgraded from “out” to “doubtful” before a road game against the Liberty. The next game, against the Aces, she was “in.” She returned to play this month to fill a Defensive Player of the Year-sized hole on a talented but incomplete Sparks roster. On the very outside of the playoff picture with a 13-15 record, Los Angeles has heated up but could very much use some help from their young franchise star.
If your primary rooting interest is offense, and you are not so concerned with the actual day-to-day fortunes of the Sparks, this is the team for you. In the offseason, the Sparks took part in the blockbuster trade that brought Kelsey Plum over from the Aces. Plum, surrounded so long by a star-studded cast in Vegas, was finally getting a show of her own. Back in the point guard role she’d played in college and early in her WNBA career, she dazzled in her LA debut, putting up 37 points and six assists. The idea of her sharing a backcourt with Rickea Jackson was immediately tantalizing. Jackson, the No. 4 pick in the 2024 draft, proved herself to be a smooth, three-level scorer in fairly limited minutes in her rookie season. “When she gets it in her mind that she’s just going to put it on the floor and go to the basket, no one can guard her,” Plum said after Tuesday night’s Fever-Sparks game.
The press release announcing the hiring of Utah’s Lynne Roberts as Sparks head coach said exactly what she was here to do. “Roberts’ teams have displayed historic efficiency, ranking No. 1 in the nation in field goal attempts from beyond the three-point line and at the rim, second in overall offensive rating, and third in effective field goal percentage,” it read. Thanks to some combination of coaching, Jackson’s development and Plum’s arrival, the Sparks have grown from the 10th-best offense in the league last year to one with the fifth-highest offensive rating, behind only the Lynx, Dream, Liberty and Fever, four teams set on a deep playoff run.
Plum does not really play defense. Jackson does occasionally. Dearica Hamby—that, I can’t even talk about. Enter Brink: Last night, in a 100-91 win against the Fever, she seemed to know that zero points and zero assists were needed from her, and that's exactly what she provided the Sparks. Plum and Jackson combined for 50 points; Hamby added 16; and shooting big Azurá Stevens chipped in her own 19 on 7-of-8 shooting. Brink is the best shot blocker in the game, and she’s also the most employed person in America. Her team is built precisely to give a shot blocker a ton of work to do.
The Sparks kept Brink busy in her only 16 minutes of play—she’s still on a minutes restriction—and she finished the night with a career-high five blocks. We can only dream that she’ll continue that pace for a full 40 minutes one day and record a 13-block game, which would topple Brittney Griner's record of 11. The block party provided just as much on-court intrigue as the latest episode of the curious WNBA arena dildo-throwing craze. (“Stop throwing dildos on the court… you’re going to hurt one of us,” Fever guard Sophie Cunningham tweeted last week, mere days before she would be grazed by a dildo.)
Brink has roughly the same control of her limbs as one of those inflatable car dealership things; an advantage of this minutes restriction is that she’s less prone to fouling out. But she’s so agile that she’s able to throw her whole body into violent blocks. The Sparks commentators last night noted the lasting effect of Brink’s volleyball days. Sometimes, when she's picked up her fourth foul in 10 seconds, you wish that she would just go straight up instead of trying to make a play. But you can understand why she loves them so much. Blocks swing momentum.
Since falling to 5-13 on the season, the Sparks have won eight of their last 10 games. A soft schedule has no doubt cushioned them—two of those 10 games were against the Mystics, and another two were against the Sun—but a recent overtime win against the Storm and another close one over the (Breanna Stewart-less) Liberty were nothing to scoff at. These Sparks never lacked in entertainment value, but when a defensive game changer is on the floor, the team looks just as fun and a lot more dangerous.
