LOS ANGELES — Derek Fisher wasn’t about to mention the chase for pole position heading into the WNBA playoffs ahead of the Sparks’ game against the Connecticut Sun on Sunday: “It’s easy to look at standings, it’s easy to think about who we played or who we’re getting to play,” he said. “But I think we just have to really be focused on being in the moment.”
His squad — the entire 12-player roster — was present and accounted for in Sunday’s bout between two of the WNBA’s best teams, when the Sparks seized the moment with a physical 84-72 victory before an announced crowd of 17,076.
Led by Riquna Williams’ game-high 21 points and Nneka Ogwumike’s 16 points and eight rebounds, the Sparks improved to 18-10, matching last season’s regular-season win total and climbing within 1 ½ games of the now-second-place Sun, who at 20-9 fell one game behind the first-place Washington Mystics.
“This is our second game with our full roster, so now we feel like this is when it really needs to count, we need to make this push,” said Sparks’ forward Chiney Ogwumike, who had five points and five rebounds off the bench in her third meeting against her former team.
“This is where we really build our full identity and I think it was a good exercise — (Fisher) called it an exercise — in playoff prep: This is a top team, a team we could see down the line, so how are we gonna approach the game? How are we gonna play the game?
“And today we just showed our focus level was very high.”
Facing the Sun’s dynamic 6-foot-6 center Jonquel Jones (16 points, 12 rebounds), Nneka Ogwumike provided her usually reliable presence for the Sparks, spinning, driving, hitting the deck and making history with her 4,000th career point on a textbook catch-and-finish at the rim in the first quarter.
And Williams performed like a player eager to make up for lost time; in her second game back from a 10-game suspension resulting from a league investigation into domestic violence charges, the explosive 5-7 guard’s contributions included sinking a stepback 3-pointer over Jones at the halftime buzzer gave the Sparks a 42-39 lead entering intermission.
“I kind of put a little pressure on myself to come back the same way I left off, playing at a high level and with great intensity and great energy for my teammates,” said Williams, who shot 7 for 12, including 5 for 8 from 3-point range.
An animated Sparks squad surged ahead in the third quarter, when Fisher’s decision to keep his starters on the court helped the Sparks outscore Connecticut 23-13 and set the table for another home-cooked victory, their 11th consecutive at Staples Center.
“It was definitely a playoff atmosphere today,” said Sparks forward Candace Parker, who chipped in with 13 points and five assists — the last of which was the 1,206th of her career, moving her up to No. 15 in league history.
Point guard Chelsea Gray added 12 points, five rebounds and six assists to the cause in a game that saw Nneka Ogwumike knocked down by a shot to the jaw and Tierra Ruffin-Pratt downed — and then T’d up for arguing the non-call — by a hip check on a screen near midcourt late in the second quarter.
“TRP, she’s a person that is always battling, wedging her way in between screens and picks, and there are times that she gets hit with a hip sticking out a a bit of a sliding screen,” Fisher said of the aggressive defender, who was able to return to the game. “And those are tough calls, it’s hard for officials to get all of them right, but we know TRP’s makeup so we kind of know when she falls down and doesn’t get back up that she probably didn’t just fall down on her own. But hopefully she’ll be fine come Tuesday (at Washington).”
