Swanson: New Sparks star Kelsey Plum says bring the heat

13.02.2025 05:40

DailyNews.com

Three-time WNBA All-Star Kelsey Plum, left, speaks to the media as new Sparks new head coach Lynne Roberts listens during a press conference on Wednesday at Crypto.com Arena. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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LOS ANGELES — Congratulations, Kelsey Plum, it’s your team now.

If the Sparks put an end to their frustrating four-year playoff drought, it will be a credit to the team’s new leader, three-time All-Star Plum.

But if the Sparks fail for a fifth consecutive season to reach the postseason, you better believe the new face of the franchise is going to get her share of the blame.

And maybe this – signing off on the trade that delivered her from the Las Vegas Aces back to her native Southern California – will go down as one of those careful-what-you-wish-for scenarios.

Or maybe it will reintroduce us to that Kelsey Plum, the transcendent talent whose college scoring record (3,527 points) Caitlin Clark had to go through at Iowa to get to the top of that all-time ledger.

Indubitably, it’s pressure that the 30-year-old Plum is craving as she begins her Sparks’ tenure, arriving this month via the three-team deal that required L.A. to send its No. 2 overall pick in this next draft to Seattle.

And that – having the audacity to bet on her own ability – is what I want in my women’s sports stars.

“I’ve been chomping at the bit to get the opportunity to lead, and to show who I am as a player on a different scale,” Plum said during a 30-minute introductory news conference on Wednesday before about 50 reporters and photographers inside Crypto.com Arena, where every screen and scoreboard displayed a version of “Welcome, Kelsey Plum” in the Sparks’ distinctive ransom-note-looking font.

“I’ve never been more ready,” she added. “And I think some people might be surprised, but no one who really knows will be.”

For the past several seasons, Plum has been one of the most recognizable members of the Las Vegas Aces’ star-studded ensemble. The 5-foot-8 guard won two WNBA titles with that group and gained fame and acclaim on what was for several seasons the league’s most popular team.

She was a dutiful contributor, starting every game over the past three seasons and averaging more than 32 minutes per while putting up between 17.8 and 20.2 points per contest.

Now she’s atop the marquee, the most recognizable member of one of the WNBA’s original franchises, a team that Plum grew up coming to watch. She would travel the “90ish minutes, depending on traffic” from Poway with her mom to see Sparks teams that were, more often than not, good, that almost always made the playoffs and won three WNBA championships along the way.

That version of herself? The 10-year-old who declared herself destined for the WNBA draft in which she’d go No. 1 in 2017? That little girl didn’t feel too far away Wednesday. “I would say I’m still that kid,” Plum said, describing her arrival in L.A. for what the Sparks were calling “K.P. Day” a “full-circle moment.”

It felt, she said, like it was meant to be, “like God really does direct your steps, even if a lot of times you don’t really understand why or where we’re going. But then you look back and you go, ‘Oh, you had a plan the whole time.’”

Or in more dramatic terms, it’s as the Sparks’ second-year general manager Raegan Pebley put it: “This is a woman who you can trace the destiny of every drop of sweat that she has poured into this game.”

With the Aces, Plum was cast mainly as a shooting guard, because she was good at it. But she’d like to remind everyone: She made the Olympic team as a point guard, and last summer won another gold medal to match the one she previously earned in 3×3 hoops action.

It’s from that position she intends to steer the Sparks back into relevance and, she better hope, contention. And, oh, to finish the season among the WNBA’s top five in assists by distributing to her dear friend and former Aces teammate Dearica Hamby, and to the Sparks’ young frontcourt talents, Cameron Brink and Rickea Jackson.

“You only go as far as you bring people,” said Plum, dressed in all white on Wednesday like a suffragette. “My ability to help my teammates grow and put them in positions to be successful is going to be the reason we’re able to win games in this league.”

Will it work? Won’t it? I wouldn’t bet against it. Just ask the Sparks’ new coach, Lynne Roberts, whose Utah women’s college team tried to contain the former Washington Huskies star in a monumental game in 2017.

“I remember we were driving the bus over, and someone on our staff said, ‘Oh, man. Plum needs 53 to break the all-time scoring record.’ And I was like, ‘Psssh, she’s not getting 53 on us.’

“And she didn’t.

“She got 57.”

Or ask Rahshaun Haylock, the Sparks’ play-by-play announcer who served as an emcee Wednesday, recalling a USC-Washington game he called years ago: “Quiet first quarter,” he said. “But then the ref called a foul against Kelsey she didn’t like and … someone from USC was talking a little bit of noise, and Kelsey just went off. She scored 13 of the next 15 and ended up with 35 and it was a runaway.

“That was my first Kelsey Plum moment.”

The Sparks are betting that their new leading lady will deliver many more, that she’ll remind us that she’s that Kelsey Plum and these are those Sparks.