Another failed summer. Another broken promise.The most underachieving team on the Los Angeles sports landscape is embarrassingly stumbling through another season.The Sparks stink. Again.They’re not making the playoffs. Again.There’s no reason to watch them even though there’s more than a month left on their schedule. Again.For the sixth consecutive season, one of the WNBA’s legacy franchises has come apart at the seams, tattering the franchise’s three-championship history with a sordid record that mandates a clear response.Trade your best player.Trade Kelsey Plum.The trade deadline is Sunday so do it quickly, and do it boldly, sending her to the sort of playoff contender who would find her worthy of young talent and draft picks.Trade KP and do it now.Yes, her 25-point scoring average would rank second in the league if she had not missed half the games with injuries.Truly, she is arguably the team’s biggest attraction with the sort of Hollywood flash that overshadows even Nneka Ogwumike.Indeed, the hard-nosed ballplayer elicits more screams and sells more tickets than any other Sparks player.Trade her anyway. Swallow hard and make it happen. Out of a million reasons, here are just three.First, her contract expires at the end of the season and she reportedly does not want to spend her prime years on a losing team. Can you blame her? Trade her before you lose her for nothing. Nneka Ogwumike shoots over Chloe Bibby of the Chicago Sky during a game this month. (Geoff Stellfox / Getty Images) Second, at age 31, she is the team’s most valuable asset, and would command a high price among contenders looking for a shooter with a championship pedigree.Third, this would be a powerful first move in a season-ending tank job.You read that right. The Sparks should tank. They should tank hard. Tank, tank, tank. They should do anything it takes to have the best chance at nabbing the first pick in the 2027 draft and a chance to take USC phenom JuJu Watkins. The pursuit of Watkins, who will need to be convinced to give up her final year of college eligibility, should be the organization’s most important priority.Anything for JuJu, and that includes trading Plum. While they’re at it, could they also please dump the massively disappointing Ariel Atkins and Erica Wheeler? Those two busts were part of the Sparks’ ill-conceived attempt last offseason to build a veteran team that could immediately compete.It didn’t work, and now the Sparks have only four players who should be welcomed back next year — Cameron Brink, Rae Burrell, Dearica Hamby and Ogwumike.Without Plum, Brink can have more space to work inside. Without Plum, Burrell can score 25 points a game. It’s a tank, but it’s not necessarily an ugly tank.The front office should also be cleansed. Former general manager Raegan Pebley is already gone, meaning coach Lynne Roberts is next, probably fired the day after the season ends. Cameron Brink is pressured by Indiana Fever guard Lexie Hull during a game in May. (Jae C. Hong / Associated Press) Their replacements might be anonymous shadow dwellers, but that’s OK. The Sparks need to not hire college wonders — no Cori Close — and enlist some good old-fashioned WNBA veteran thinkers and evaluators and leaders.The Sparks basically need to start from scratch, and it starts with a major move sometime in the next five days.Trade KP.Please?“We pushed in a lot of chips this year, and we had good reason to do that, but the reality is it hasn’t gone as we’d hoped or expected,” said Farhan Zaidi, special advisor to Sparks’ owner Mark Walter. “Now we have to be open for anything. Everything has to be on the table for us. We have to take a long-term perspective rather than focusing on the rest of the season.”In other words, the trade light is lit!Zaidi wouldn’t comment on specific players or club personnel, only to note that the Sparks cannot grow as constituted.“We have to be realistic where we are,” he said. “We don’t want to be that team stuck in the middle.”In other words, keeping Plum might give them a few more wins, but to what end? They contend for the final playoff berth only to fall short? And if they make it, how long would they last against a powerhouse like Minnesota? For a big-market, win-now team like the Sparks, mediocrity is a death knell.Zaidi trusts that Sparks fans will understand, and I agree.Their growing fan base is as smart as they are passionate. They understand that to break this losing spell, the Sparks will have to break with franchise tradition and basically give up on this season to build hope for the next.My daughter and fellow season-ticket holder MC was quick to react when I told her I was going to advocate trading Plum. The Sparks should trade Kelsey Plum before she walks away as a free agent. (Aryanna Frank / Getty Images) “Write it,” she said. “I want hope.”Zaidi thinks other fans will agree.“We have very smart fans, I don’t want to patronize them as to where we are,” he said. ”Our dedicated fans will understand if we have to take a step back to get to that championship level. I can step back if I feel like we’re building something.”Zaidi noted, “I think it can happen quickly.”He’s right. In a league in which a team like Golden State can contend for a title in only its second season, in a space where both of this year’s expansion teams — Toronto and Portland — can have better records than the Sparks, rebuilding doesn’t take much.If the Sparks get some young talent and draft picks for Plum, then sign a top free agent by using the construction of their new practice facility as a selling point… who knows?The Sparks need to do whatever it takes to become the Sparks again.Hello, hope.Goodbye, KP.
