The Sparks did not expect South Carolina guard Ta'niya Latson to be there in the second round of the WNBA draft on Monday. By then, six UCLA players had already gone off the board among the first 18 picks, and Los Angeles had to wait until No. 20 in the second round for its first selection.
That left the Sparks with little room to answer one of the sharpest questions in their 30th season: how to build a roster that can end a five-year playoff drought when the draft does not give them much to work with. Los Angeles had traded away its first-round pick two years earlier for the rights to draft Rickea Jackson, then recently sent Jackson to Chicago for Ariel Atkins.
The moves say plenty about where the Sparks are. They are one of the league’s founding franchises, but they entered Monday unable to make much of a dent in the free-agent market and short on decent draft capital. The roster now leans on two returning starters, Kelsey Plum and Dearica Hamby, while also bringing back Nneka Ogwumike, who played for Seattle last year and will be 36 during the season, and Erica Wheeler, who has played for three teams in the last four years and will be 35 during the season. Atkins arrives with a championship on her résumé from seven years ago with the Washington Mystics.
Latson was not the only player the Sparks could have looked at, but she was the one they did not expect to fall. Described as a strong shooter who can also defend, she would have fit a team that needs playable help without much margin for error. Cameron Brink is the only current Sparks player left from five years of lottery missteps, a reminder that the club has spent too long trying to patch holes instead of shaping a stable core.
The tension for Los Angeles is plain. It has improved its top end, but it still must survive one more season before getting a shot at JuJu Watkins, and it opens the season on May 10 by hosting defending champion Las Vegas. For now, the Sparks are trying to turn a roster built through detours into one that can finally point in one direction.
