The Los Angeles Sparks are a Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) team based in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1997, the Sparks are one of the eight original WNBA teams. Also one of the teams that participated in the league's inaugural game, the Sparks are the sister team of the Los Angeles Lakers. Since their inception, the Sparks have been a focal point of the league. The team's major star has always been former USC standout Lisa Leslie, who has led the Sparks since the team's inception.
Uniform: Gold with purple lines on the side at home, with the name Sparks written across in purple. Purple with golden yellow lines on the side on the road, with the name Los Angeles in Yellow. The uniform looks similar to the Los Angeles Lakers' uniform.
The 1997 WNBA season, the league's first, opened with a game between Los Angeles and the New York Liberty that the Sparks lost. Sparks player Penny Toler scored the league's first two points with a lay-up in that game. The Sparks had what many considered being a disappointing season in 1997, finishing with a record of 14–14. The team did compete for a playoff spot, but thanks to a loss to the Phoenix Mercury in the final game of the season, it missed the playoffs. In 1998, the Sparks finished 12–18, missing the playoffs once more.
The 1999 season featured the development of Lisa Leslie and the Sparks' first playoff berth, as the Sparks posted a 20–12 record. The Sparks won their first playoff game and series, too, with a win over the Sacramento Monarchs. They played a competitive Western Conference Finals but fell to the defending champion Houston Comets, 2 games to 1, in the three-game series.
The 2000 season was a record one, as the Sparks tore up the WNBA with a record 28–4 record. In the playoffs, the Sparks swept the Phoenix Mercury in the first round but lost in the West Finals again, when they were swept by the Comets.
The 2000-01 offseason saw an important coaching change, when the Sparks hired former Los Angeles Lakers player Michael Cooper as head coach. During the ensuing regular season, the Sparks again posted a 28–4 record. In that season's playoffs, the Sparks finally eliminated the Comets, sweeping them in the first round. The Sparks needed three games to eliminate the Monarchs to earn their first berth in the WNBA Finals, in which they swept the Charlotte Sting, 2–0, for their first league championship.
In 2002, Leslie became the first woman in the league to dunk the ball during a game, and once again the Sparks dominated the regular season, posting a 25–7 record. The Sparks then flew through the playoffs, sweeping both the Seattle Storm and the Utah Starzz to reach the finals. In the finals, the Sparks were matched against the Liberty, who was still looking for their first championship. After splitting the first two games, the Sparks pulled away in game three to win their second championship.
In 2003, the Sparks posted a 24–10 record and went into the playoffs looking for a "three-peat". They had to play the maximum number of games in each series to reach the finals, as they beat the Minnesota Lynx and Sacramento Monarchs. The Sparks then faced the upstart Detroit Shock in the finals. The rough road to the finals and the tough play of the Shock in the finals wore down the team, which lost the series, two games to one.
During the 2003-04 offseason, the Sparks signed two standout players, Tamika Whitmore and Teresa Weatherspoon, both of whom had played for the rival New York Liberty. When the season began, the Sparks got off to a great start, but Coach Cooper left at midseason to seek a coaching job in the NBA. The loss of their coach was a factor in the team's so-so finish to the season, which ended with a record of 25–9. During the playoffs, the team stumbled, losing in three games to the Sacramento Monarchs.
The Sparks struggle through the 2005 season and finished with a 17–17 record. That season they barely made the playoffs, in which they got the number-four seed. In the first round, the Sparks were badly outplayed and were swept by the eventual champion Sacramento Monarchs.
In 2006, the Sparks played much better, posting a 25–9 record. In the playoffs, they defeated the Seattle Storm in three games. However, in the Western Conference finals, the Sparks' season was ended by the Monarchs for the second year in a row, as the Sparks were swept.
After the 2006 season ended, team owner Jerry Buss, who also owned the Lakers, announced he was selling the Sparks. On December 7, 2006, the Los Angeles Times reported the sale to an investor group led by Kathy Goodman and Carla Christofferson. Goodman is currently a high school teacher at High Tech High-LA in Lake Balboa and was a former executive for Intermedia Films. Christofferson is a litigation attorney for the O’Melveny & Myers law firm and was Miss North Dakota USA in 1989. The day after the sale was announced, team star Lisa Leslie announced that she was pregnant and would not play in the WNBA in the 2007 season despite Michael Cooper's return to the team as head coach.
The loss of Leslie for the year proved devastating, as the Sparks posted a league-worst 10–24 record. The record was also the worst in Sparks’s history, as the Sparks missed the playoffs for the first time since 1998. Before the start of the 2008 season, the team's prospects improved dramatically. Lisa Leslie returned to the team, and on April 9, 2008, the team used its number-one draft pick to select Candace Parker, the college player of the year, the morning after Parker had led the University of Tennessee to their second-straight NCAA championship. Within hours of drafting Parker, the team posted pictures of Leslie and Parker on the welcome page of its official Web site.
