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How missing out on Paige Bueckers led Sparks to fire GM in another strange move originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
The Los Angeles Sparks put all their eggs in the Paige Bueckers basket, and they came up short.
Instead of bringing Bueckers to Hollywood and tipping a new era of Sparks basketball, Los Angeles watched as the Dallas Wings won the first overall pick -- and the right to take Bueckers -- in 2025.
Since then, Bueckers has won Rookie of the Year and blossomed into a two-time All-Star leading one of the WNBA's great revivals in Dallas.
The Sparks meanwhile are spinning their wheels, uncertain of their future direction.
MORE: Wings react with mock outrage to Paige Bueckers' disrespectful moment against Sky
Los Angeles on Sunday parted ways with general manager Raegan Pebley after two years in charge. The dismissal was the culmination of a series of strange moves from a franchise that seemed to embrace a youth movement when Pebley took over in 2024, only to change direction wildly just a year later when the lottery balls bounced a different way.
Pebley fired head coach Curt Miller after a franchise-worst 8-32 season in 2024, in which it was hoped that second overall pick Cameron Brink would herald a youth movement. Instead, Brink tore her ACL midway through the season; arguably, she hasn't been the same player since. With the fourth pick, the Sparks took Rickea Jackson; Los Angeles had acquired that pick from the Seattle Storm in exchange for a future first-round selection.
The Storm used that selection this past April to take Awa Fam third overall in the 2026 draft.
On Jan. 31, 2025, Pebley made a splashy trade to acquire All-Star guard Kelsey Plum from the Las Vegas Aces. To complete the deal, Pebley ceded a first-round pick to the Storm; that pick became Dominique Malonga, now an All-Star and one of the WNBA's brightest young talents.
The Plum trade has failed on multiple accounts. The Sparks missed the playoffs for a fifth straight season in 2025, and while Plum is enjoying a stellar individual season in 2026, she has been out multiple weeks with a lower leg injury.
The Sparks doubled down after missing out on Bueckers and effectively ended their youth movement after roughly two seasons. Los Angeles dealt Rickea Jackson to the Chicago Sky in April and reunited with former MVP Nneka Ogwumike in free agency. Pebley also signed Dearica Hamby, Erica Wheeler and Ariel Atkins -- acquired for Jackson -- to multi-year contracts that chewed up the Sparks' cap space.
Pebley's roster management malpractice was borne out further in the decision to leave veteran guard Julie Allemand and rookie sharpshooter Sarah Ashlee Barker unprotected in the expansion draft. Allemand now runs point for the upstart Toronto Tempo, while Barker -- now with the Portland Fire -- has improved significantly in her second WNBA season.
If the season ended today, the 10-11 Sparks would miss the playoffs for a sixth season running, easily the longest streak in the WNBA. Los Angeles has not won a postseason series this decade, and it has been 10 years since the Sparks were WNBA champions.
Pebley's greatest sin as the Sparks' general manager was to make moves based on an assumption of lottery luck. Los Angeles lurched from one extreme to another in response, from a youth-centric to rebuild to hodgepodge assemblage of former All-Stars.
As such, the Sparks appear doomed to mediocrity unless and until the franchise takes a patient, deliberate approach to team-building. In one of the WNBA's largest markets, that is easier said than done.
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