Sparks end their skid by downing Mercury
Finally, the Sparks had some fun.
After five consecutive defeats, on Wednesday at Crytpo.com Arena, they scored a convincing 9994 victory over the Phoenix Mercury, who cut the Sparks' 10-point lead to 97-94 on a pair of Diana Taurasi free throws with one minute left.
Fortunately for Derek Fisher's squad, the Mercury (2-5) lost their fourth consecutive game, having waited too long to solve the Sparks contributors who seemed to be coming at them from every direction — including defensively.
Katie Lou Samuelson — who scored a career-high 17 points in her first start as a Spark — stayed in front of Skylar Diggins-Smith on a drive with 32 seconds left, blocked the Phoenix guard's layup and corralled the rebound to help the Sparks' preserve a precarious three-point lead.
Diamond DeShields fouled Jordin Canada hard with 16.8 second left, and Canada made one of two attempts and then
THE SCORE
SPARKS 99, MERCURY 94
Up next: Sparks at Fever, Friday, 4p.m., SpecSN
DeShiels missed a shot and Samuelson tipped the rebound back to Nneka Ogwumike, who connected on one of her two free throws to increase the Sparks' lead to 99-94 with 10.1 ticks to go.
Earlier, Diggins-Smith evaded Brittney Sykes at the rim only to have Chennedy Carter swat her shot away. Diggins-Smith hit the deck and looked up, astonished, to see it had been a mean-mugging Carter who'd denied her so vigorously.
Carter — aka “Hollywood” — put on a show on the offensive end too, with 12 points on 6-for-9 shooting in 17 minutes.
Nneka Ogwumike (23 points) and Liz Cambage (21) led L.A., which also got 10 points from Lexie Brown, who stayed hot, hitting 4 of her 5 shots and both of her 3-point tries before a crowd of 4,000.
The Sparks (3-5) didn't trail after the first quarter for just the second time this season.