Dearica Hamby is carrying a Los Angeles Sparks team that has already given up
Aug 5, 2026; Chicago, Illinois, USA; Chicago Sky center Kamilla Cardoso (10) defends against Los Angeles Sparks forward Dearica Hamby (5) during the first half of a WNBA game at Wintrust Arena.
The Los Angeles Sparks spent the better part of two years building toward something. They acquired Kelsey Plum, signed Nneka Ogwumike in spring 2026, and assembled what looked like a legitimate contender. Then, in the night of August 1 to August 2, hours before the trade deadline, they sent Plum to the Phoenix Mercury for Monique Akoa-Makani, a 2027 first-round pick and a 2028 second-round pick. Yahoo Sports framed it plainly: the Sparks had decided to « tear it down. » The rebuild is now official.
What followed was predictable. Los Angeles has gone 1-7 over their last eight games, sitting at 11-18 on the season — six games behind the eighth-place Washington Mystics (17-12) in the race for the final WNBA playoff spot. With 15 games left on the schedule, the Sparks would need to win 11 of them just to finish at .500. They are fighting for that eighth seed alongside Washington, Chicago, Phoenix, Portland and the Tempo — a race that looks increasingly theoretical given the direction the front office has chosen. ESPN‘s trade deadline report card graded the deal squarely from the winners’ perspective, and the winners were not in Los Angeles.
Hamby refuses to go quietly
Through all of it, Dearica Hamby has been relentless. On August 2 — the same day the Plum trade became public — she posted 23 points, 10 rebounds and 4 assists in a road win at Portland. Three days later, in an 88-95 loss at Chicago, she finished with 22 points, 14 rebounds and 4 assists, going 7-of-10 on 2-pointers and logging around 33 minutes. The Chicago Tribune and the LA Times both confirmed the stat line, along with the detail that the Sky scored 34 points in the fourth quarter alone to put the game away.
The number that tells the real story is Hamby’s plus-minus that night: -6. She produced at an All-Star level and the Sparks still lost by seven. It is the cleanest illustration of where this team stands — its best player carrying the load, and the roster around her sinking anyway. No other Sparks player reached 15 points; Erica Wheeler had 14, Rae Burrell 13, Cameron Brink 11, Ogwumike 10.
There was also a quieter detail buried in the box score. Monique Akoa-Makani, the player who came back from Phoenix in the Plum trade, made her Sparks debut that same night — 3 points in limited minutes, while Hamby was single-handedly trying to keep the game competitive. The centerpiece of the return for the franchise’s best player and the centerpiece of its current production shared the same box score, on opposite ends of relevance.
She is 32 years old. The numbers she is putting up belong on a playoff roster, not on a team that just traded its best player for draft capital.
An uncomfortable question the front office will eventually have to answer
That gap — between what Hamby is producing and what the Sparks are building toward — is the central tension in Los Angeles right now. A front office that has explicitly shifted into rebuild mode, accumulating picks and young assets, is not naturally aligned with maximizing the prime years of a 32-year-old forward performing at this level.
No trade involving Hamby has been reported. There is no indication from any source that such a move is imminent or even under discussion. But the Plum deal demonstrated that the Sparks are willing to make unsentimental decisions quickly. The question of whether Hamby is next on that list is not a rumor — it is simply the logical next line of an autopsy that the organization has already begun writing.
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