Sparks vs. Aces: Kelsey Plum Drops a Season-High 38 on Her Former Team in a 101-95 Los Angeles Win

There are big games against your old team, and then there's 38 points on 12-of-17 shooting in their building with nine assists on the side. Kelsey Plum did not so much play the Las Vegas Aces on Saturday night as audit them.

Plum's season-high 38 carried the Los Angeles Sparks to a 101-95 win at Michelob ULTRA Arena, Erica Wheeler hit the go-ahead 3 with 1:15 left, and the reigning WNBA champions watched a four-game win streak end in a game with 19 lead changes and very little defense worth bragging about.

Nineteen Lead Changes and Nobody Blinking

The first quarter set the tone at 32-30 Sparks, which is a lot of points for 10 minutes. Las Vegas took control in the second, winning the period 22-14 for a 52-46 halftime lead, and NaLyssa Smith's 3 early in the third stretched it to 57-48. That was the biggest cushion of the night for either side, and it lasted about as long as a phone battery at a music festival.

Los Angeles ripped off 12 straight, with Plum scoring five and assisting on three more baskets, to go up 60-57. From there the margin never got past three in either direction until the horn, and the Aces took a 73-72 lead to the fourth.

Then the Sparks found another gear. A 10-0 run that started in the final seconds of the third and ended on a Wheeler 3 made it 80-73 with 9:04 left. The Aces, because they're the Aces, clawed back. A'ja Wilson's 24-foot 3 cut it to 90-88, and Chelsea Gray's jumper tied it at 90 with 3:19 to go. After Los Angeles went up four, Chennedy Carter's floater and two Wilson free throws tied it again at 94 with 1:36 left.

One Shot, Then Free Throws

The whole game came down to a single trip. Plum found Wheeler behind the arc, and Wheeler buried a deep 3 with 1:15 remaining for a 97-94 lead. Neither team made another field goal.

Las Vegas missed a couple of 3s on its last trips and split a pair at the line. Dearica Hamby made two free throws, Carter made one of two, and Plum went to the stripe with 19.4 seconds left and made both. Of course she did. She had not missed one all night.

Plum's Receipts

Start with the shooting: 12-of-17 overall, 6-of-7 from 3, 8-of-8 at the line. Then add the nine assists. In the final five minutes, Los Angeles made five field goals. Plum scored three of them, including a step-back 3 at 4:12, and assisted on the other two. That's not a hot hand. That's a team running its whole late-game offense through one person, and that person being right every time.

The Sparks' postgame notes add some context. Plum needed five 3s to pass Tamika Catchings for 12th on the WNBA's all-time 3-pointers list, and she hit six, giving her 608 for her career. The team also counted this as the ninth 30-point game of her career, and it came against her former club.

Wheeler's line was the sneaky best in the building after Plum's: 10 points, seven rebounds, six assists and a team-high plus-15. Cameron Brink made her first start of the season, the 16th of her career, and responded with a season-high 16 on 7-of-11 shooting with eight rebounds, though she also had six turnovers and fouled out. Hamby scored 16 and fouled out as well, and according to the team she became the seventh player in franchise history to pass 1,000 rebounds with the club. Ariel Atkins added 11 and Rae Burrell 10.

Las Vegas had plenty of its own firepower. Wilson finished with 24 points, 15 rebounds, four assists, four blocks and two steals, though it took her 20 shots. Carter came off the bench for 23 on 8-of-13 shooting, going 4-of-4 from 3 and finishing plus-15. Smith had 22 with nine rebounds, six of them on the offensive end. The holes were elsewhere in the rotation. Jewell Loyd went 3-of-13, Gray missed all five of her 3s, and Jackie Young went scoreless in 19 minutes with five fouls.

How the Aces Won Everything but the Game

Look at this list and guess who won. Las Vegas took nine more shots. It grabbed 13 offensive rebounds to Los Angeles' four. It blocked nine shots to the Sparks' one. It won the paint 40-36 and scored 17 points off turnovers while giving up just eight the other way.

The Sparks lost all of those categories and won anyway, because they shot 55 percent and went 14-of-29 from 3. When the other team simply will not miss, second chances only get you so far. The turning point is Wheeler's shot with 1:15 left, but the reason there was a shot to take was the shooting clinic that came before it.

The Numbers That Sting

• 14-of-29: Los Angeles from 3, against 10-of-29 for Las Vegas on the same number of tries.
• 55-45: Field-goal percentage, Sparks.
• 13-4: Offensive rebounds, Aces.
• 9-1: Blocks, also Aces. Not enough.
• 29: Sparks 3s across their last two games, a franchise record for any two-game stretch, according to the team.

Where Everybody Stands

Los Angeles evens up at 3-3 and stays perfect on the road at 2-0, with two straight wins after Thursday's 97-88 victory in Phoenix. Next up is a trip to Washington on Friday.

Las Vegas falls to 4-2. Here's the weird part: the Aces are 4-0 away from home and 0-2 in their own gym. This loss also ended a remarkable regular-season stretch, in which they had won 20 of 21 going back to the 16 straight that closed out 2025. They visit Dallas on Thursday.

Kelsey's Version

If you've paid any attention to pop music lately, you know what happens when an artist goes back to an old catalog. She re-records it, she adds a few bonus tracks, and somehow it hits harder than the original. That's what this was. Same arena, different jersey, 38 points, and the crowd in Las Vegas got to hear every single one of them. Call it Kelsey's Version.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Milestones and game notes from the Los Angeles Sparks. Game context as reported by the Associated Press.