WNBA Season Preview 2019: The Sparks are going to be awesome, unless they aren’t

There’s a possibility that any sort of preseason concerns about the Los Angeles Sparks look silly in just a few months. There’s a possibility that the team rips off a 27-7 season and then marches through the playoffs, knowing they’re unlikely to be bothered by each of the last two champions, the Lynx and the Storm.

The last time the Ogwumike sisters, Nneka and Chiney, were united, they led Stanford basketball to a combined 68-5 record over two years (2010-12), the last time that legendary coach Tara VanDerveer hit the Final Four in consecutive seasons. There’s a chance that a pedestrian 19-15 season in 2018 was just a blip in what is otherwise a dynastic power: Candace Parker is top-20 all-time in points scored, but still has many years left at 33 years old — and her career will only get longer if she spends more winters working for TNT instead of playing abroad. While Nneka, the older Ogwumike sister, feels like a Hall of Fame-ready WNBA institution, she is somehow only 28 years old, with Chiney right behind her at 27.

This could all come to pass. Still, it won’t just happen just because first-time WNBA head coach Derek Fisher rolls out the basketballs and has the league’s most name-recognizable roster go to work. As much potential as the Sparks have for 2019 and beyond, there are still a number of subtle pressure points that could cause the season to go awry.

With such a top-heavy lineup, the Sparks will need to stay healthy for the entire season in order to make the anticipated amount of noise. This worked out well enough for last year’s champion Seattle Storm, whose preferred starting five only missed a combined six games throughout the regular season. The margin for Los Angeles is likely just that thin: Nneka Ogwumike had a mostly healthy year in 2018, playing in 27 of 34 games. But those seven missed games caused major damage, with the Sparks only going 2-5 across those contests. If the Sparks had won just two or three additional more games, they would have received a crucial bye past one or both of the single-elimination rounds which suddenly ended their 2018 season.

The losses the Sparks sustained to their rotation over the winter will make that competition for seeding even harder, with Essence Carson now in Phoenix and Odyssey Sims performing one of the quickest babyface turns of all-time after being traded to Los Angeles’ bitter rival in Minnesota. Candace Parker will reportedly miss up to six weeks after a meniscus tear. Also, guard Riquna Williams deserves at least some sort of suspension for her domestic violence incident in April, which will temporarily cut the Sparks’ rotation even shorter. There’s also a chance that the Ogwumike sisters’ unselfish, efficient interior game is positionally redundant. They had enough talent to blast away opponents in college, but will they remain productive in the pros, when opposing All-Star bigs like Elena Delle Donne, DeWanna Bonner, or (healthy) Breanna Stewart love to stretch the floor?

But the biggest question mark, as I see it, is head coach Fisher. For Los Angeles faithful, the arrival of Fisher must have felt like the next triumphant chapter in Los Angeles basketball: in the same way Michael Cooper earned championships for the Lakers before coaching the Sparks to glory, now Fisher has a similar chance to earn rings for both franchises.

The issue with the comparison is that Cooper and Fisher have gone about their post-playing careers in almost completely opposite ways. Cooper worked as an assistant for both the Lakers and the Sparks before he became the Sparks’ head coach, and has gone on to flesh out his coaching résumé with tenures in the NCAA, G League, and at other WNBA stops. All Fisher has done as a coach is taking a Knicks team from the middle of the standings down to the basement, going just 40-96 before being fired during his second season by his very own Zen Master. Fisher has used his free time since then to become involved in a company that is effectively a predatory lender towards athletes, a business venture that could not be more at odds with the WNBA’s lifelong scrapping for financial stability (not to mention it’s also at odds with every other sports league, ever).

Cooper and his 1980’s NBA rival Bill Laimbeer have become two of the greatest WNBA coaches, winning five of the league’s 22 championships between them. But simply being a former NBA player is far from a guarantee that a coach can cut it in the WNBA: Muggsy Bogues went 14-30 in his brief stint with the Charlotte Sting, and Henry Bibby could only go 13-15 with the Sparks despite having Lisa Leslie and Chamique Holdsclaw on his squad. Plus, while Dee Brown has managed to raise a WNBA player — second-year Lynx guard Lexie — he only went 22-36 despite getting attempts with two different teams. If Fisher is expecting his gig with the Sparks to be any less challenging compared to his years in the NBA, his coaching tenure will go in the same direction regardless of who is on the roster.