The Sparks 5,567 mile haul in 4 days is what’s wrong with the WNBA playoff format

The Los Angeles Sparks flew across the country three times in a six-day span, then ended their season in a brutal second-round single-elimination playoff game, 96-64, to the Washington Mystics on the road. Travel conditions have been a topic of issue across the WNBA all season, and this was one of the worst schedules a team has had all year.

Though the better team ended up winning, fans are left to wonder if a fairer travel plan would’ve given fans at least a better product on the floor.

The Sparks left Connecticut on Sunday after a loss to the Sun. When playing the Sun in Uncasville, teams must take a three-hour bus ride to New York’s JFK airport, a Sparks staffer told SB Nation. The team — which is only permitted to fly commercially by league rules — landed at 2 a.m. in Los Angeles on Monday morning.

On Tuesday night, the Sparks played at home in L.A. against the reigning champion Minnesota Lynx in a single-elimination playoff game and won. Their reward? A Wednesday a.m. flight back across the country to D.C. in which they were blown out by the Mystics.

Coach Brian Agler and stars Nneka Ogwumike and Candace Parker refused to pin the blame for the loss on travel — even as Ogwumike’s battled mononucleosis since the All-Star break, and Parker had to sit minutes in Tuesday’s game due to illness. (Trainers were seen rubbing Parker’s temple for an apparent migraine on the bench and suffered from nausea.)

“For me it comes down to this,” Parker said after the game, “We did this to ourselves. The teams that got rest took care of business. We didn’t. So we had to travel out east three straight weeks. We did it to ourselves.”

She’s right. The team’s inability to finish in the top-4 of the league’s standings caused them to see out the WNBA’s playoff system in an unimaginably rough manner. They hit a stroke of bad luck as the new conference-less playoff system had them matched up against a team on the opposite side of the country in Round 2.

This season has already been as tough as any because the league packed its same 34-game schedule into a two-week shorter season to allow players to compete international in the FIBA women’s tournament at the end of September.

“Let’s get back to our regular scheduled programming,” Parker said jokingly after the loss. “Two games per week because us old guys, we can’t do this. I’m not gonna sugar coat it... I’m excited to get some rest. I’m tired as hell. I can say it now.”

Los Angeles isn’t used to getting the bad end of this new playoff format. They’ve been the beneficiary of the WNBA’s playoff changes in both years prior to this one, riding sweet double-byes to the Finals. That’s helped produce two of the most memorable five-game Finals series in WNBA history, and created a stark rivalry between the Sparks and Lynx. Now both teams are gone.

“I do think the majority of people across the board would like to have extended series’, Agler said. “Obviously I’m not in that decision making. But that’s not the reason we were eliminated. We were eliminated because this is the format, everybody signed up for it, we were in this position because of how we played and we came up short today.”

Maybe they would’ve lost to a better Washington team anyway, but it’s hard to see how this travel pattern couldn’t have contributed to a woeful night.

The Sparks shot 34 percent from the field, 11 percent worse than their average, and watched the Mystics run off on a 44-18 first-half run that they never came back from. Nneka Ogwumike, the league’s MVP in 2016, finished with eight points on 20 percent shooting, and neither Candace Parker nor Chelsea Gray looked fully themselves.

“Our mentality is that we play the hand that we’re dealt with,” Agler said.

The WNBA’s current Collective Bargaining Agreement has an opt-out date of Nov. 1., which the Players Association is expected to take.

Players have been outspoken on the topic since early August when the Las Vegas Aces forfeited a game with playoff implications against the Mystics due to 25 hours worth of travel issues. The team had a flight delayed four times, had to sit through a middle-of-the-night layover and didn’t arrive to D.C. until around five hours before tip-off.

Stars Sue Bird and Liz Cambage both stood by the team’s decision to forfeit, while the Mystics disagreed. But it’s clear travel fixes are a priority for most players around the league.

Any travel issues won’t be fixed for next season, as the new CBA won’t go in effect until 2020. But if Thursday night’s single-elimination blowout was any indication, it’s in the best interest of the players and the league to give its stars the proper rest.