Phoenix, AZ – The LA Sparks’ (5-7) second matchup with the Phoenix Mercury (3-7) on Sunday was a shootout from start to finish.
If there was a theme song that should have been played during this game it would have been “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor.” Jordin Canada, who just returned from a hamstring issue, went down hard in the first half and was slow to get up. Mercury’s Sophie Cunningham was on the sideline in visible pain. Nneka Ogwumike proudly took a foul after flinging a defender to the ground. The back and forth between these two teams was fantastic.
But the Sparks could never really turn the corner and gain momentum. You could cite the very slow start from the Sparks’ starters as a reason for the loss. Or, it could be the team’s defensive struggles. But the Sparks have two glaring problems that make winning any game an uphill battle.
First, outside of Brittney Sykes, the Sparks have no perimeter defense. The team has yet to stop any team from shooting the three at will. Sunday’s game against the Mercury was no different. The Sparks allowed the Mercury to take 24 three-point shots in Footprint Arena. Skylar Diggins-Smith went 3-4 from outside. If Diana Taurasi was able to knock down more of her shots instead of going 3-9, this would have been an epic blowout.
The second problem is Liz Cambage. Week after week we have heard Derek Fisher, Ogwumike, and even Cambage herself speak about how the team has to protect her and keep her calm. But we have yet to see her hold herself accountable. Cambage is a great defender of anything that comes right to her. Is she going to go out of her way to defend? No. But then again, how could she? She is typically late transitioning onto defense because she has to write a four-page letter to the refs every time she feels they miss a call.
The only way to coach her out of that is to make sure there are consequences when she does. For a moment, I thought this was going to be the game where Head Coach/GM Derek Fisher would finally put his foot down. After several timeouts to try to draw up a plan to get the Sparks back in the game in the fourth, Fisher benched Cambage for the majority of the quarter.
I was excited to see coach Fisher finally issue some tough love. But if that was his reasoning, he certainly didn’t want that to be known. In his postgame interview, he said keeping her out of the game might have been a mistake on his part.
The team will have the entire week to reflect before they face Cambage’s old team, the 9-2 Las Vegas Aces in Crypto Arena on Saturday, June 11th at 6 PM PST.
