{"id":125376,"date":"2025-08-07T04:11:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T04:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/125376\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T04:11:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T04:11:15","slug":"cameron-brink-is-back-and-ready-to-swat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/125376\/","title":{"rendered":"Cameron Brink Is Back And Ready To Swat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh yeah, Cameron Brink! The Los Angeles Sparks\u2019 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. 3×3 basketball team, an opportunity that once delighted her to the point of tears<\/a>. It also cut short a promising rookie season in which she\u2019d looked like she\u2019d soon be among the best defensive players in the league.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the final days of July, some thrilling news popped up on the Sparks’ injury report: Brink was upgraded from \u201cout\u201d to \u201cdoubtful\u201d before a road game against the Liberty. The next game, against the Aces, she was \u201cin.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> 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\u2019d 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. \u201cWhen she gets it in her mind that she\u2019s just going to put it on the floor and go to the basket, no one can guard her,\u201d Plum said after Tuesday night\u2019s Fever-Sparks game.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The press release announcing the hiring of Utah\u2019s Lynne Roberts as Sparks head coach said exactly what she was here to do. \u201cRoberts\u2019 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,\u201d it read. Thanks to some combination of coaching, Jackson\u2019s development and Plum\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Plum does not really play defense. Jackson does occasionally. Dearica Hamby\u2014that, I can\u2019t 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 Azur\u00e1 Stevens chipped in her own 19 on 7-of-8 shooting. Brink is the best shot blocker in the game, and she\u2019s also the most employed person in America. Her team is built precisely to give a shot blocker a ton of work to do.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The Sparks kept Brink busy in her only 16 minutes of play\u2014she\u2019s still on a minutes restriction\u2014and she finished the night with a career-high five blocks. We can only dream that she\u2019ll 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.<\/a> (\u201cStop throwing dildos on the court\u2026 you\u2019re going to hurt one of us,\u201d Fever guard Sophie Cunningham tweeted<\/a> last week, mere days before she would be grazed <\/strong>by a dildo.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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\u2019s less prone to fouling out. But she\u2019s so agile that she\u2019s able to throw her whole body into violent blocks. The Sparks commentators last night noted the lasting effect of Brink\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2014two of those 10 games were against the Mystics, and another two were against the Sun\u2014but a recent overtime win against the Storm and a close loss to the 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.<\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oh yeah, Cameron Brink! The Los Angeles Sparks\u2019 No. 2 pick in 2024 last played in the WNBA…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":125377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[62,67,132,68,232],"class_list":{"0":"post-125376","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us","12":"tag-wnba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114985532383767548","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}