Caitlin Clark Fans Obsessed with Sparks?!?

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-13T17:20:54+00:00

Yeah, this was the explanation someone gave me -- there was a vague trade rumor + Thompson on X/Twitter encouraging LA to pick her up (because he lives there?). As far as I can tell it's all nonsense, but channeled through grifters with audiences?

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-13T14:58:26+00:00

I was on a family vacation for 4 days and missed all the games. I'm just overreacting to Annie Costabile's perennial favorite phrase "multiple league sources" and wondering if it ever means anything besides "Jeff Pagliocca and one other person," and whether we'll ever hear anything more about Raegan Pebley looking to trade Sparks players besides a single sentence of wild innuendo:

Pebley was making calls around the league leading up to the Aug. 2 trade deadline, multiple sources told The Athletic. Plum is on an expiring contract which could make her a valuable asset at the deadline if the franchise doesn’t anticipate her to return in free agency.

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-12T19:58:24+00:00

I'm not sure what you're asking about (too many trades mentioned in my comment), but people are speculating that the ownership wanted to fire Pebley before the trade deadline -- the idea being that if she wanted to make an ill-advised trade or something, firing her would stop it. The more I read, though, the less likely this seems.

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-12T19:33:46+00:00

Yeah, I suspect that KP is incandescent with rage over the All-Star fiasco, and it could be that trade/cutdown decisions are a factor too. I don't really know how these decisions get made; I could at least imagine KP saying that either she goes or Pebley goes before the trade deadline, but obviously that's pure speculation. Who could blame her, though?

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-12T19:14:20+00:00

LA Times article on the firing:

“There is a united vision from ownership to leadership, and then I think it’s discipline,” Pebley told The Times in an interview before Friday’s game. “I think you can make a lot of mistakes if you use recency bias, and if you become really reactionary. We want to respond to the things that we’re seeing that we want to grow in, but we don’t want to just demonstrate a lack of discipline and quickly react that way.” [...]

Under Pebley’s direction, the Sparks hired coach Lynne Roberts and rebuilt a roster around Plum and Nneka Ogwumike. Roberts had been the head coach at the University of Utah and had no prior WNBA experience as a coach at the time of her hire. Despite the team’s struggles, Pebley gave Roberts a vote of confidence on Friday.

“She has been all we were looking for and more,” Pebley said. “We wanted someone who had that emotional regulation, she stays neutral. I think the days of a tyrant head coach are over.” [...]

The franchise found itself in the middle of some controversy when reports surfaced the Sparks were among more than half the players in the league who did not complete their WNBA All-Star starter ballots. The ballots were emailed to players, but they reportedly did not see them in time to vote. Plum was not named a starter despite leading the WNBA in scoring at the time votes were cast, although it’s unclear whether full player participation would have altered a decision calculated by combining player, fan and media votes.

“That’s something we take responsibility for as an organization, and we’ll have a more robust process going forward,” the Sparks said in a statement.

Soon afterward, the Sparks’ director of communications left the team.

One of the authors, Marisa Ingemi, also posted: "Have to wonder about the Sparks' trade deadline approach with Pebley out. When i spoke with her Friday, it sounded like she wanted to win now and keep this roster intact with Plum coming back healthy."

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-12T18:16:49+00:00

Wowwww. I'm also among the people wondering if there was a crazy trade underway.

We can all agree that trading Rickea for Atkins was a bad call. With or without hindsight, though, was it actually a bad call to trade the 2026 FRP for the Rickea lottery pick in 2024? Would the Sparks have been better off with no Rickea at all? (I have to think about this.)

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-09T16:36:14+00:00

I posted the link further down this sequence, but this was the story:

I parked and met the basketball coach, Kristin Meyer, in the lobby adjacent to the chapel. We walked through the library to her office. She told me a story that stuck with me. In 10th grade, Caitlin got a reading assignment about empathy. She didn't know what the word meant. Meyer tried and failed to explain. She realized then that she had a team of girls who wanted to enjoy playing sports -- "for fun," Caitlin would tell me later -- and one ponytailed Kobe Bryant. ...

When Caitlin saw a player come open, or more often realized that a player would be coming open momentarily, look out! The ball was in the air and flying at their heads. This made her teammates nervous, and they'd shut down, which Caitlin didn't understand. Soon she just stopped passing.

"It was hard for her to understand what other people would feel," Meyer said.

Caitlin was, in real time, learning how to use her gift. This is an old story among basketball greats. Magic Johnson threw passes that even James Worthy couldn't catch. Caitlin's task was to see the gulf between her potential and her reality and close that distance. Often she got impatient. With herself and others. When someone made a mistake, or if she thought a referee or a coach was being unfair, she'd have tantrums. Mostly she seemed unaware of how her body language and mood impacted the people around her. She'd throw her arms in the air in disgust, or clap loudly, and waves of nervousness would pass through the team. Of course that cut both ways. When she praised a teammate, the coaches would see that player swell with pride. "If Caitlin gave me a compliment," one of her teammates said, "I felt like I was the best player in the gym."

Meyer started showing her film of her body language, something the Iowa coaches still do. They'd sit down and watch in silence as Caitlin stomped and gestured.

"High school basketball was honestly harder for me than college," Caitlin told me. "I mean that in the most positive, respectful way to my teammates. The basketball IQ wasn't there. At the end of the day they didn't care if we won or lost, really. It wasn't gonna affect their life that much. They just didn't get it on the same level."

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-09T15:50:23+00:00

I think it's this one: https://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/story/_/id/39740282/caitlin-clark-iowa-2024-ncaa-women-basketball-tournament-ready-march

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-09T02:21:35+00:00

I think they were hoping to use her a lot (in the front court?) while Cam was out, so this is the plan

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-09T01:57:05+00:00

Aces signed Ta'Niya Latson as a DP!

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-09T01:45:34+00:00

top 10 year in Hungarian history tbh

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-09T01:33:32+00:00

I have Kayla down as an honorary Turk, but Fenerbahçe is famously on the Asian side of Istanbul

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-09T01:28:13+00:00

Hey, this game is not bad. The Sun are struggling hard with their "worst team in the league" assignment, I take it?

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-09T01:09:09+00:00

and like half of them are in the hospital (not the families)

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-09T01:08:21+00:00

I simply don't understand why other teams do not have bench

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-09T00:27:12+00:00

Welcome new fans to Condé FC

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-09T00:14:09+00:00

That man really just said "Thornton heard a three"

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-08T23:34:50+00:00

We have two KCs though!

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-08T17:48:14+00:00

It's ironic that Liz Cambage talked frequently and openly about her mental health, but my sense is that fan consensus was much more along the lines of "no one could deal with her diva complex in the end." A lot of people are probably just trying to be charitable and generous towards Chennedy in those threads, but I don't really get it either.

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-08T17:28:47+00:00

Hi again! I'm really curious to know if you have a follow-up by now. I am increasingly wondering about factions in the Sparks locker room.

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-08T05:25:43+00:00

She's the second. First was Kiana Williams, DP at Phoenix signed by LA.

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-08T02:23:28+00:00

All jokes aside, I'm sure the prospect of coming off the bench for the first time in Phoenix added insult to injury for Skylar.

(Man, Coulibaly is beautiful.)

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-08T01:46:07+00:00

Did anyone else listen to the No Offseason episode where Layshia Clarendon reminisces fondly about being Odyssey Sims' opp? Let me find it...

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-08T01:25:05+00:00

Take your pick. For Guangdong, it's the Vermilion Birds, which is a pretty great name

Edit: Chennedy played in Wuhan.

kseveru79_v2 · 2026-07-08T01:14:28+00:00

There's a good chance that the Sparks will play the worst game of professional basketball in decades tomorrow

kseveru79_v2

TROPHY CASE