Over the course of a 44-game WNBA regular season, there are plenty of important games with potential playoff consequences. However, Tuesday’s. matchup between the Los Angeles Sparks and Chicago Sky is not one of them. The Sparks are just 4-10 after finishing with the league’s worst record last season, and the Sky are 3-10. Right now, they sit 10th and 11th in the WNBA standings; the top eight teams make the postseason.
That doesn’t mean that there isn’t plenty to watch for. Los Angeles guard Kelsey Plum has her own team for the first time in her career and is making the most of it, and Chicago center Angel Reese is in the middle of arguably the best six-game stretch of her career, still gobbling up boards while finishing at a somewhat more efficient clip.
The Sparks are five-point favorites on DraftKings Sportsbook (-218 Moneyline), with the total set at 166.5 points. Below, I’ll break down the clash and offer my prediction.
Sparks at Sky prediction, pick
I like this game to be relatively high-scoring; the Sky have the league’s second-worst defensive rating and Los Angeles is fourth-to-last, and both teams play at roughly average paces. The Sparks also have at least a passable offense, ranking eighth in offensive rating and sixth in true shooting percentage, while Chicago has been inefficient, too. Neither team has been in good form; the Sky recently allowed 107 points to the Phoenix Mercury, just the third time a team has hit triple digits this season, and Los Angeles has lost by 16 or more points in each of its last three games.
The Sparks’ chances start and end with Plum, who plays a league-leading 36.2 minutes per game despite being a 30-year-old undersized guard with a torn Achilles tendon in her past. Among players with 200 or more minutes this season, she ranks ninth in usage rate, and she’s also averaging a career-high 5.5 assists per game. Los Angeles’ reliance on her makes sense; though it has been outscored by 5.5 points per 100 possessions with her on the floor, its net rating is a pitiful negative-16.6 without her. However, this added responsibility has come with a dip in her efficiency, as she’s averaging just 16.4 points per game on 32-27-97 shooting splits over her last seven games. The key to tonight’s game will be whether the Sky’s defensive deficiencies — they’ve allowed the best field goal and three-point percentages — will be enough to get Plum out of her slump.
Reese should be more efficient than usual, given that the Sparks have allowed opponents to shoot 65.4% from within five feet of the basket, the second-best efficiency in the league, and their defensive rebounding performance is the league’s sixth-lowest. Reese’s finishing stats for the season still aren’t great — she’s made 41.1% of her attempts within five feet, the only player trying at least five tries per game from that range to be shooting so inefficiently — but at least she’s made more than half of those shots in her last six games. She hasn’t recorded more than three offensive rebounds in any of her last five games, which is probably a good thing, given that many of those boards were “mebounds”.
Reese isn’t the only Chicago player to demonstrate some progress recently. Kamilla Cardoso has reached double figures four times in her last five games, shooting 60.9% from the field across that span, and thanks in part to her rim protection, the Sky have held opponents to the second-lowest field goal percentage within five feet from the basket. Ariel Atkins, too, has slotted nicely into the void left by Courtney Vandersloot’s season-ending injury, dropping 29 points in her most recent game. The 28-year-old has also hit 43.8% of her triples over the last four games, which is critical given that none of her teammates have made more than one-third of their tries this season. I like Atkins’ ceiling against a team that has allowed the fifth-highest three-point percentage in the league so far.
