Lisa Leslie watched the Los Angeles Sparks open their home schedule with a 105-78 loss to the Las Vegas Aces on Sunday, a game that turned sharply after the visitors shot 62% from the field and pulled away once the Sparks briefly cut the gap to one possession in the first half. The Aces broke the game open from there and left the Sparks searching for answers in front of their own crowd.
Kelsey Plum’s reaction summed up the night. “They just punched us in the face,” she said. “We didn’t respond.” The Sparks did open the scoring through Ariel Atkins, who also took a charge and forced a shot-clock disruption, but the early spark did not last. Atkins finished 0-for-6 from three-point range, and Las Vegas’ efficiency eventually buried any chance of a rally.
The swing came with one minute left in the first half, when Atkins got a hand on a Las Vegas pass and triggered a scramble that ended with a Nneka Ogwumike three-pointer. It was the kind of sequence Los Angeles needs more often after a season in which its opponents scored a league-worst 88.2 points per game. But the burst was brief, and the Aces were able to reassert control before halftime.
Lynne Roberts said afterward that the Sparks simply were not physical enough on that end of the floor to turn the game back. “We didn’t have the fight defensively to scrap back in,” she said. Roberts added that Atkins, Ogwumike and Erica Wheeler were brought in because they understand what it takes defensively, calling Wheeler “an absolute bulldog defensively” and saying Atkins brings qualities the team did not have last year. She also said the responsibility does not rest only with the roster. “So a lot of it is personnel in terms of improvements, but a lot of it is on me and our staff to continually get better in that space,” Roberts said.
That defensive makeover was a central part of the Sparks’ offseason plan, which aimed to clean up the offense while keeping the pace and adding pieces that fit a more committed defensive mindset. The trade of Rickea Jackson for Atkins was described internally as a bet on defense, and Sunday showed why. Atkins can disrupt a passing lane, force a turnover, and change the tone of a possession in a way this team did not consistently do a year ago.
Ogwumike said Atkins’ presence was already showing up in the small things that matter over the course of a game. “She gave us some extra possessions, she’s really leading us in our efforts on defense,” Ogwumike said. She added that Atkins “does an amazing job of making our mistakes look like they didn’t happen” and that the Sparks did not respond well enough after that first-half push. For Los Angeles, the problem is no longer theoretical. The roster was built to defend better. The home opener made clear that the work is still far from finished.
