No Offseason Newsletter 🏀 | This is The Athletic’s women’s basketball newsletter. Sign up here to receive No Offseason directly in your inbox.Welcome back to No Offseason! This season’s getting spicy. Today we unpack:
Let’s go.On the GroundTensions rise in L.A.The 30 or so minutes of practice the media gets to view aren’t always the most revelatory. You see a lot of warm-ups, shooting drills — sometimes half-court shots — and other ways of running out the clock before teams close the doors and get to the good stuff.But there was some actual tension at practice in Los Angeles last week after the Sparks, who came into the season with hopes of contention, started the season 1-3. (They’re now 3-3.)After the scout team scored on yet another offensive rebound, Nneka Ogwumike had about enough. After doling out little bits of wisdom throughout practice, like “Let’s not go for so many ball fakes,” this particular error demanded a stop in the action.The 15-year veteran, who joined the Sparks in free agency, chastised her teammates for relaxing after every mistake instead of continuing to play. She questioned why players were competing on offense but not on defense.In her words, “What the hell?”Instances like this show why the Sparks believed they needed Ogwumike to restore their franchise’s legitimacy. The seven-time All-Defensive honoree can — and clearly will — hold the rest of the team accountable on that end of the floor.Los Angeles won’t be a lockdown squad, but even a middling defense — the Sparks ranked 10th out of 15 teams in defensive rating over the last week — will be enough to get wins when their offense finds its rhythm.Ionescu debuts for New YorkIn Brooklyn, the New York Liberty (3-4) had nearly an entire week of practice between the end of their three-game road trip and their home game against the Golden State Valkyries. There was no visible tension on the Liberty practice court. Instead, it was gratitude, as their full roster slowly began to take shape:
