Rae Burrell opens up on Sparks career and the season that was

From being a lottery pick to getting cut and ultimately returning and earning a spot in the rotation, the road has been anything but smooth for Rae Burrell as a Los Angeles Spark.

Sitting at the bottom of the WNBA standings, the Sparks are far from championship contention. But, with some key pieces already in place, they aren’t far away from that goal.

Dearica Hamby is atop the list for the Sparks after reaching the All-Star game and revitalizing her career in Los Angeles last season.

Then you have Rickea Jackson, a budding offensive talent who made the WNBA All-Rookie team. And there’s Cameron Brink, the electrifying big whose rookie year was cut short due to an ACL tear.

Championship teams aren’t built only on star power, though. Every title-winner across any sport needs the players capable of filling their role and stepping up when the moment calls for it.

For the Sparks, that is Rae Burrell. The Las Vegas native had a breakout season, finally cracking the rotation and proving worthy of a bigger role.

Her numbers don’t jump off the page at first glance: 5.9 points, 1.8 rebounds and 1.1 assists last season. However, after the Olympic break, her minutes increased, as did her production.

Once play resumed, she scored 14 or more points four times and played 18.3 minutes per game, a dramatic uptick from the first month of the season when she only touched the court for 9.6 minutes per contest.

Every player who dribbles a basketball dreams of playing professionally. The harsh reality is that only the top one percent ever reach those heights. With the WNBA currently having just 144 roster spots, that dream is even harder to achieve than in most major sports in America.

Playing during her collegiate years for the Tennessee Volunteers, Burrell was excelling. She finished her junior year averaging 16.8 points and 4.6 rebounds while featuring in all 25 contests.

Her senior season at Tennessee was anything but a smooth last dance. Early in the year, she suffered a knee injury and missed 13 games because of it. Burrell had serious doubts about whether declaring for the WNBA Draft was the right move. She bet on herself and won with the Sparks, who selected her with the No. 9 pick in the WNBA Draft.

“When I finally got my name called, like it was just surreal,” Burrell told Silver Screen & Roll. “It was just showing that all that work and all that, you know, physically and mentally that had got put in up into that moment wasn’t for nothing. And it just was a great feeling.”

It takes a lifetime to reach the pros, but it can all be gone in the blink of an eye.

Burrell played in just three games during her rookie season due to a knee injury that cut her year short. The 2022 season was horrendous for the Sparks. Derek Fisher and the franchise parted ways and the team mustered just 13 wins, missing the playoffs for a second year in a row.

The 2023 season ushered in a new era in Los Angeles with Curt Miller as the Sparks’ head coach and Karen Bryant as general manager. Suddenly, a combination of a new coaching regime, the Sparks having more wing players and needing people who were better equipped to play the four put Burrell on the outside looking in at a place on the team.

So, on May 16, the Sparks decided to waive Burrell before the start of the 2023 season. This was the lowest point in her young career, but life in the WNBA moves quickly and unexpectedly.

“With the W, it’s just so hard with only 12 players on a roster,” Burrell said. “One person gets hurt and that can mess up another person’s opportunity. So I think, some injuries kind of messed me up with going into that second year, where it was the decision made, where they had to pick somebody that could play the four a little bit more.”

Burrell didn’t spend much time out of the WNBA. Barely a week later on May 27, Los Angeles brought Burrell back to the Sparks on a hardship contract. She spent the rest of the year on these types of deals and played well enough to ultimately sign a multi-year contract with the Sparks on Feb 1, 2024.

For the first time in a long time, Burrell had stability, as much as that is possible in the WNBA.

“When I got cut, it made me put into perspective how easy it is to be in this league and be out,” Burrell said. “So it just made me more grateful for when I did come back and made me want to work even harder because I knew what it felt like to get cut from the league and not be playing and without a job.”

With some stability in hand and trust in a new coach established, it’s no surprise that 2024 was the best yet from Burrell.

Her confidence radiated like the sun and on the floor, she aggressively attacked the basket on offense and embraced contact on defense.

The most encouraging part of Burrell’s second half of 2024 is that her best games came against top talent. She had an 18-point performance against the New York Liberty where she was lights out, going 7-8 for the field to help give L.A. a rare win. She also had double-figure scoring games against playoff teams in the Indiana Fever and the Seattle Storm twice.

Unfortunately, Burrell’s individual performance didn’t bring team success. The Sparks missed the playoffs for the fourth year in a row and parted ways with Miller at season’s end.

As she enters the fourth season of her WNBA career in 2025, Burrell will be playing for her third head coach. It's not exactly a recipe for success, stability, or development.

“For me, honestly, I’ve experienced this more times than I would like,” Burrell said. “With the coaching change, I’m keeping track now and I’m on coach number nine, I think, since high school. It’s something that I’m almost kind of used to. I just know that coming in, whoever they pick, and I trust that they’re going to pick somebody good, that to just be myself and just continue to be the player that I am and I feel like it’ll all work itself out.”

The Sparks' coaching decision comes at a pivotal time for the franchise. The WNBA is in the middle of a revolution.

The WNBA Finals were the most viewed Finals series in 25 years, up 115 percent compared to 2023. Over two million people attended WNBA games, the highest total in 22 years.

New talent like rookie Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever has helped add lighter fluid to the league. Veterans are also elevating the W like unanimous MVP A’ja Wilson, who played in front of sold-out crowds all year in Las Vegas for the Aces.

And Sabrina Ionescu and Breanna Stewart brought the New York Liberty their first title in WNBA history this season in front of a packed Barclays Center with celebrities like Spike Lee in attendance.

Los Angeles has a great opportunity to take this young core and potentially the top pick of the 2024 WNBA Draft, if ping pong balls bounce their way, and turn this franchise around. Fans are yearning for Paige Bueckers and adding her to this young core could lead to them copying the blueprint the Fever already laid out.

Regardless of what happens with the 2025 WNBA Draft, though, other issues need to be addressed. The Sparks have fallen behind not just on the court but in the details that matter.

They don’t have a dedicated practice facility they can call home. Currently, they practice at El Camino Community College, 14 miles away from downtown Los Angeles. If the Sparks want to continue growing at the same rate as the rest of the league, a practice facility should be near the top of the list.

“I think it’s so important,” Burrell said. “I mean, just having a facility that you can go to whenever you need to and having the resources that you need there. Like me, I’m the type of person, I like to go hit the gym late at night and, being able to have a facility that I can get into and get those shots up late at night when I need to, it’s just crucial for feeling good for the game and, I also like ice baths, so like recovery for me is very important.

“So, just having those resources like that, I think, is a game changer with just being prepared for the game and just recovering for the game. I mean, we have so many games during our season in a three-month season, we have like 40-something games and I think they’re adding some more. That recovery and that facility is so important. I think it’s a game changer for any team to have a facility that they can call their home.”

These issues, while important, are not things Burrell can change on her own. They are, however, one of the reasons the Women’s National Basketball Players Association (WNBPA) opted out of their collective bargaining agreement in October. One of the key points that was sighted for opting out was a desire for enhanced professional working conditions.

If anyone can handle all of these balls in the air, it’s Burrell. She’s dealt with it all in just three years in the league and with a full offseason to hone her skills, she’s focused on becoming the best version of herself and finally getting a taste of WNBA postseason action.

“I want to make the playoffs and I think we are a team that is more than capable of doing that,” Burrell said. “Then, like I said, my personal goals are just getting more efficient in the league and kind of establishing myself even more in this upcoming season with what I want to show, the things that I can do and there’s a lot of things that I can do. So, just focusing on my efficiency and focusing on my defense and my personal goals that I have for this next season and yeah, just number one, making the playoffs for sure.”

The WNBA offseason is a long five-month excursion, so answering questions regarding draft pick selections, head coaching decisions and a long-term practice facility solution will take time.

These are dark times for Sparks fans, but some pieces are already in place with Hamby, Brink and Jackson for the franchise to quickly go from worst to playoffs.

Burrell is also one of those pieces and from the looks of it, she’s just getting started.

All quotes acquired firsthand. You can follow Edwin on Twitter at @ECreates88.