Los Angeles, CA – The time is now, we have all been waiting for the 2023 WNBA Season to kickoff. League play begins this Friday May 19th. The Phoenix Mercury vs Los Angeles Sparks on ESPN at 8pm PST at Crypto.com Arena will be the night cap.
With new coach Curt Miller is tasked with rebuilding the Los Angeles Sparks, who have so much rich history of winning championships. The current training camp roster is changing day by day. Thursday May 18th at 5pm is the deadline for the season starting roster for all teams.
The Sparks have played two preseason / scrimmages to see the strength and weakness of each players to fix the puzzle of a cohesive team built to play defense first to set off a great offense. Miller has a track record of taking on teams and making them relevant come playoff time.
During the last scrimmage verse the up and coming Seattle Storm team took the victory 76-69 final. The Storm was lead by Arella Guirantes (#11) who scored 13 points in only 11 minutes of play mainly in the second half. She made Storm coach Noelle Quinn take notice by taking over.
The Sparks guard Karlie Samuelson was tops with 11 points playing the most minutes in the game at 24:20. This last ditch performance wasn’t enough to not be waived before the final roster.
“There night’s when get out talented, out executed but we should never feel that we were out toughed,” said Miller.
The Ogwumike sister will be a big key to success of this 2023 season, with Nneka offensive fire power and Chiney scrappy defense.
A roster surprise was Rae Burrell (#12) being released after showing great promise in camp grabbing 5 rebounds with 5 points in a limited role.
“We did some good things, again there were stretches in both game where defensively we did some good things,” said Miller.
The Sparks will finalize their roster in less then 24 hours, it’s going to be an exciting season to see how far they can go.
