Sparks move on from Kelsey Plum, trading her to Phoenix Mercury
· Yahoo Sports
The Kelsey Plum era is over in Los Angeles. The Sparks are sending the five-time All-Star to Phoenix in exchange for Monique Akoa Makani, the Mercury’s 2027 first-round pick and a 2028 second-rounder, league sources confirmed to The Athletic. ESPN was first to report.
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The Sparks traded the No. 2 pick in the 2025 draft (which became All-Star Dominique Malonga) to acquire Plum in the 2025 offseason in an attempt to end their rebuild and get to the playoffs for the first time since 2020. That plan didn’t pan out: Los Angeles came up two games short of the postseason in 2025, and Plum’s lower leg injury in 2026 dug the Sparks a hole they could not get out of.
At 10-17 and 5 1/2 games out of a playoff spot, Los Angeles is pulling the plug on this season, and that means moving on from Plum, who will be an unrestricted free agent in the offseason. Plum has only played 12 games in 2026, but is second in the league in scoring (23.9 points per game) and sixth in assists (6.4). She is arguably the most efficient No. 1 option as a guard in the league — her field-goal percentage only trails A’ja Wilson among top-10 scorers — and she has also been a secondary (even tertiary) scoring option on a two-time title team in Las Vegas.
As reported by The Athletic, the sense from executives around the league was that Plum wouldn’t re-sign in Los Angeles, forcing the Sparks’ hand to trade her and recoup some of the value they lost in acquiring the five-time All-Star guard. Even so, there have rarely been trades involving all-WNBA players during the season. The last time it happened was in 2015 when the Chicago Sky dealt Sylvia Fowles to Minnesota. The Lynx ultimately won the championship that season and Fowles was named finals MVP.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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