LOS ANGELES — Twelve years into her WNBA career, Nneka Ogwumike can’t believe how much she’s still learning.
A former MVP, multi-time All-Star and all-WNBA selection, and one of the league’s top 25 players of all time, Ogwumike is going home after practice and studying. She’s learning how to play the game differently and staving off complacency. For the first time in a long time, the environment around the Sparks feels, in her words, dynamic and cerebral.
It’s a welcome change in Los Angeles, considering no team in the WNBA needed a reset this past offseason more than the Sparks.
The organization was dealing with back-to-back postseason misses for the first time in more than 20 years, and years of trading away future draft picks had left the Sparks without a young core to rebuild around. Then there were the bad optics of a franchise icon and another generational talent walking out in free agency, each leading their new teams to titles. With Ogwumike, the team’s lone remaining star heading into unrestricted free agency, the Sparks needed a fix, and a quick one.
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“What was most important was just accountability, discipline and direction,” Ogwumike said about what the team was…
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