Sparks’ Cameron Brink, Rickea Jackson navigate tough WNBA rookie path

LOS ANGELES — It’s not easy being a WNBA rookie.

The fact is that it is not easy to become a WNBA rookie. In April’s draft, 36 players were selected. Twelve of them are currently on league rosters, and familiar players such as UCLA’s Charisma Osborne and USC’s McKenzie Forbes and Kaitlyn Davis have not made their respective teams.

Of those who succeeded? Well, aside from Indiana’s Caitlin Clark, the No. 1 selection and the player everyone is talking about, often for reasons that have little to do with her play or stats (33, 5 minutes played, 16.8 points, 5.3 rebounds, 6.3 assists). 12 games).

Of the 17 remaining rookies, including three players selected in previous drafts and three undrafted players, 10 are averaging that many double-digit minutes. That includes the Sparks’ top draft picks, No. 2 pick Cameron Brink (24.1 minutes, 8.2 points, 5.9 rebounds, 2.8 blocked shots after Sunday’s 96-92 win over the champ Las Vegas) and No. 4 Rickea Jackson. (23.2 minutes, 9.6 points, 48.1% field goal shooting, 3.0 rebounds).

The Sparks are currently rebuilding, as noted by coach Curt Miller. Their rookies are, if not the cornerstones, then at least the key pieces of what this team will look like in the future. But their first exposure to professional basketball was a wake-up call.

Start with this: a rookie in this league has weeks to prepare, rather than the months they would have in other leagues or other sports. College basketball seasons end in March (or, for the lucky ones, the first week of April). The draft took place on April 15. Training camps began on April 28 – an earlier start than normal in an Olympic year – and the regular season began on May 14, the day after the final selections.

Then again, in a sport that has become a lifelong pursuit for many players due to the need to play overseas in the winter in order to earn anything close to their market value, exhaustion is only an obstacle moreover.

“It’s something I have to do, something I’ve wanted to do, and I know it’s the process,” said Jackson, whose last game at Tennessee was March 25, a loss in the second round of the NCAA tournament. “You’re in college one month and the next month you’re in the league and you’re playing your first WNBA game.

“Honestly, I don’t think it’s really hit me yet. I just take it day by day, like, “Okay, you need to be here. You must be there. So with everything being such a whirlwind, I don’t think I’ve really gotten to where I could sit down and (say), ‘You were just in college a few months ago.’

She will benefit from the Olympic break, from July 21 to August 14, to recharge her batteries. Brink, who was named to the U.S. Olympic team last week for the 3-on-3 basketball competition, won’t be so lucky.

Not that it bothers her.

“Honestly, even before I was a WNBA player, I wanted to be an Olympian,” Brink said during a Zoom interview last week after being named to the 3-on-3 team. “It’s so really a big deal for me.”

As for the fast track and transition from being a Stanford student to being a professional athlete? It’s busy, but she said she’s used to it.

“I say it a lot: my family, my support system, I have great people around me,” she said before Sunday night’s game against Las Vegas. “It’s not easy to do alone, but I have people around me.”

It helped that Brink and Jackson could lean on each other, and they got support from the team.

“Really happy with how they handled everything,” Miller said. “They are high-level recruits. There’s a lot of social attention, a lot of expectations about drafting two lottery picks and building our future with young people in mind, with those two pieces as pieces of the puzzle. So, first of all, they came with expectations. They arrived with great fanfare and they handled the situation fantastically.

As for this track…

“Their game, like most rookies, is a little inconsistent at times right now,” he said. “You know, the shortest training camp in league history. We are in a difficult rhythm of matches because of the Olympic year. Their learning laboratory is therefore very interested in games. And that’s not easy to do when you’re learning in front of 10,000 people every night.

The professional game is much more physical than what newcomers were accustomed to in college, as has been noted – often hysterically, largely by observers exposed to the league for the first time. Jackson said she expected “it to be harder, but I didn’t expect it to be this hard… when you’re actually in it, it’s like, ‘Oh, This is different.'”

And with only 12 spots per team, the veterans will make the rookies earn their keep. When Phoenix’s Diana Taurasi remarked before the season that “reality happens,” Clark’s fans — including many of the newbies mentioned above — took it personally.

But it’s nothing personal. This is exactly the order of the world, especially in an environment with 144 jobs available.