All Candace Parker has to prove is that the Sparks are the best team in the WNBA

Nobody saw this coming from the Los Angeles Sparks. A sub-.500 team a season ago, the 11-0 Sparks climbed to the top of this year’s standings with mostly the same core of talent. Only trouble is, so the reigning champion Minnesota Lynx (12-0) is also undefeated.

Now the two unbeatens will play a home-and-home in the most hyped week of regular season play in league history. Tuesday afternoon’s game in Los Angeles (3:30 p.m. ET on NBATV) will be the first ever played by two teams with ten wins and no losses or ties in WNBA, NBA, MLB, NHL, or NFL history.

Don’t pit it as “Olympic snub” Candace Parker vs. four All-Stars who were selected over her, either. The recently named top-20 player of all-time has nothing to prove on an individual scale; this season’s success has come because she’s been the same superstar she’s always been. Only this year, it finally looks like Parker is playing on the league’s best team, ready to win her first title.

Last season, four Sparks starters -- Parker, Nneka Ogwumike, Kristi Toliver and Alana Beard -- missed a combined 55 games. Parker rested the first half of the season, Ogwumike battled foot and ankle injuries and Beard suffered from plantar fasciitis, and the team barely made the playoffs with a record six games below .500. Fast forward a year and a healthy Sparks team has both the league’s highest offensive and defensive ratings with that unit playing alongside free agent acquisition Essence Carson. If Los Angeles can threaten a team that’s been predictably dominant it’ll be because you never know which of the reacquainted Sparks will take over.

Despite Parker’s star role, the Sparks are loaded with do-it-alls. The team’s top two scorers, Parker (16.5 ppg) and Ogwumike (17.6 ppg), are also the first and third leading assist-makers on the team, and often find each other cutting or posting up down low. At the top of the key 6’4 Parker and 6’2 Ogwumike have clear sight in the half court to swing passes over defender’s heads or behind their backs to meet cutters near the hoop. Parker’s 4.4 assists per game and Ogwumike’s 3.3 place them as two of four forward’s in the league’s top-16. The Sparks have the inside game on lock with a pair of versatile All-Star talents, and their high shooting numbers are a product of it, as well as their league-best assist to turnover ratio.

Ogwumike is especially creative in slipping screens and cutting backdoor. She’s shooting an unreal 70 percent from the floor while scoring over 18 points per game because she’s able to hold position around the rim where she can finish strong. Over three games she set a WNBA record making 23 consecutive shots, 14 of which were assisted with post entry passes or from running out in transition. Twenty-one of the shots were layups.

Ogwumike finds all that room to operate down low thanks to LA’s ability to space the floor with shooters and fill in lanes. She also benefits from defensive attention devoted to -- who else? -- Parker, whose 39.5% 3-point shooting stretches the floor far and wide.

“Parker’s three-point shooting is very important,” said Ogwumike. “Candace isn’t the only one that opens up the court. All of us can shoot, really, which is extremely helpful. But what Candace can do, not only drawing the defense out, but taking them off the dribble is essential to our chemistry. I think that contributed a lot to the relationship I have with her on the court. I know her well. I can play off of her and when she’s hitting the three, it really makes things difficult on the defense. It opens things up on the inside and it creates several threats on different parts of the court.”

The scoring doesn’t just come from the inside, though, as the Sparks are the best 3-point shooting in the league as well bolstered by the best deep threat in the game, Toliver. Teams set on stopping the Sparks on the inside have to reconsider given Parker’s role as a stretch big, Carson’s and Chelsea Gray’s abilities to knock down shots from range and Toliver’s ability to pull up from anywhere.

Should she choose to blow by her defender, Toliver having a pair of eyes under her ponytail doesn’t hurt either.

The fluid interchangeability of the team’s ball-handlers in the open court -- any of four starters, from 5’7 Toliver to 6’4 Parker, can push the break -- makes this team so dangerous. Couple that with how effective the Sparks’ defense has been, forcing the third-highest turnovers per game and picking up the second-most steals, and you’ve got a picture of why Los Angeles has been so efficient. Parker’s more agile than most forwards her size and Beard has some of the best hands in the nation so the Sparks generate easy buckets no matter whose hands the loose ball lands in.

Fast-break points could be the deciding factor in this historic game. If there’s one area where the Lynx could be said to struggle, it’s transition defense. In the opening part of their season they wasted 23- and 24-point leads in back-to-back games, and it’s still not quite patched up yet.

“I think we’re improving,” said Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve. “I think the things we saw in that Liberty game were things that were kind of occurring on a daily basis in practice or game situations. Frankly I looked at that and said that I thought I didn’t prepare our team as well as I needed to in that area early enough in the season. It’s not hard to fix. I think we’re way more in tune to not giving up easy baskets. We have progressed, but we have not peaked in that area. But we better be good at it tomorrow because they’re gonna get out and run with their post players and it’ll pose some challenges for us.”

Regardless of the outcome of the home-and-home, this week’s series could look very different from when the two teams meet again in September during the tiring late stretch of an Olympic season. That’s where perceived “snubs” could turn into a benefit for Los Angeles. Unlike Minnesota, who will send four of its starters to Rio for the Olympics, only the Sparks’ Ana Dabovic (Serbia) will miss the chance to take a full month rest in August.

That means that last year’s biggest gripe for L.A. -- health -- could become its biggest advantage. Who knows how big the rivalry will be by then?