Kelsey Plum trade grades: Mercury make a head-scratching move; Sparks embrace the rebuild

The Los Angeles Sparks have traded five-time WNBA All-Star and two-time WNBA champion Kelsey Plum to the Phoenix Mercury in a blockbuster move hours before the trade deadline, ESPN reports. This is just the fourth time in league history that an All-Star has been traded midseason.

>The Mercury are sending Monique Akoa Makani, a 2027 first-round pick and a 2028 second-rounder to the Sparks in exchange for Plum, who was the top trade target in the league leading up to the trade deadline at 3:00 p.m. ET on Sunday.

>Plum has only played in 12 games this season -- she had an ankle injury earlier this year and has been sidelined for more than a month with a lower leg injury -- but through June, she was averaging a career-high 23.9 points and 6.4 assists on 52.7/38.3/80.6 shooting splits. The Washington alum was named to her fifth All-Star team this year despite her limited availability.

>While it is not known when exactly Plum will make her season debut for Phoenix, who face the Sky on Monday night at 9 p.m. ET, it shouldn't be long; prior to the trade, the Sparks had listed Plum as "probable" for their Sunday afternoon game against the Fire.

>Plum was picked No. 1 overall in the 2017 WNBA Draft by the San Antonio Stars and moved with the franchise to Las Vegas in 2018, becoming a key part of the Aces' first two championships in 2022 and 2023. She was traded to the Sparks before the 2025 season, but while Plum has excelled on the court, the team has not. In 2025, Los Angeles was two wins shy of making it to the postseason. This season, the Sparks have gone 2-9 since Plum's injury and currently sit in 11th place at 10-17, five and a half games back from the eighth and final playoff spot. The Sparks fired general manager Raegan Pebley last month, and Plum, who signed a one-year, $999,999 contract in the offseason, was not expected to re-sign with the team.

>Now that Plum's one-and-a-half-season tenure in Los Angeles is officially over, here are our grades for the trade:

>While it has been a bad year for the Sparks, it has been an even worse year for the Mercury. Last year, the team was riding high after seeing its big three of Alyssa Thomas, Kahleah Copper and Satou Sabally finally click on all cylinders in the playoffs and take the team all the way to the WNBA Finals. Even though they were swept by the Aces, there were plenty of reasons for the Mercury to be bullish about the future.

>But the offseason was confounding at best: the Mercury lost Sabally to the Liberty in free agency and didn't really add any other player of note. Phoenix (11-19) currently sits 12th in the standings and a staggering six games back from the eighth and final playoff spot with only 14 games left to play, putting them in real danger of being only the second team in league history to miss the playoffs the season after making it to the WNBA Finals.

>Yes, Plum will immediately give the team some much-needed offensive firepower. While she hasn't played enough to qualify for the official leaderboard, Plum's 23.9 points per game are second only to A'ja Wilson's 26.8, and the Mercury currently sit 11th in the league in points per game (83.5) and 12th in offensive rating (104.7). Seeing her team up with Thomas and Copper will be electric, and the Mercury won't be an easy out for anyone down the stretch.

>However, even if the Mercury win all 14 of their games to close out the season, they still need a lot of help from teams like the Mystics and Liberty to even sneak into the playoffs, where they'd likely face the Lynx in the first round. The odds of making the postseason are slim, and the odds of making a run like last year's are even slimmer.

>But with or without a miracle finish to the season, Plum is going to become an unrestricted free agent. Even if Plum does re-sign with Phoenix and decide to make her home in the Valley, was it really necessary to give up real assets -- which we will dissect in the next section -- to make that happen when they could have signed her in free agency anyway?

>Furthermore, unless they make major offseason moves, 2027 will be the seventh year in a row that the Mercury won't have a first-round draft pick.

>My initial thought was to give the Sparks a B, but the more I dove into how badly the Mercury mishandled this trade, the better I felt about the Sparks.

>Simply put, the Sparks absolutely had to trade Plum, because letting a player that good leave in the offseason for nothing would have been an abject disaster for a team that should be committing to the rebuild they've been putting off for years. In the days leading up to the trade, there were reports that the Sparks weren't pleased with any of the offers they were getting for Plum, and real fear was building that they might hang onto her.

>But instead, despite having very little leverage, the Sparks managed to get a pretty decent haul. Akoa Makani is a promising young talent who has started 16 games for the Mercury this season and is averaging 9.4 points, 2.1 boards, 2.5 assists and 1.2 steals. The second-year guard from Cameroon started in all 11 of the Mercury's postseason games in 2025.

>The 2027 Draft is expected to be a deep one, and Phoenix is likely to be a lottery team. It is befuddling why the Mercury would give up that big of an asset for a 14-game rental amidst an all-but-lost season, but the Sparks should be thanking their lucky stars that they did.

>Look, this is not how anyone wanted the Plum era in Los Angeles to end. When the Sparks traded the No. 2 overall pick in the 2025 Draft in a three-team deal that landed them Plum, the franchise was punting on developing future prospects with the hopes that the point guard would lead them to immediate glory. And Plum was looking to step out of the shadows of her Aces teammates and show what was possible when she was the primary option. Neither got what they wanted.

>The Sparks saw Dominique Malonga, the No. 2 pick in 2025, flourish with the Seattle Storm. Then they traded away Rickea Jackson, their No. 4 pick in the 2024 Draft, to the Chicago Sky for Ariel Atkins this offseason. They added Nneka Ogwumike in free agency, a real boon, but ultimately were left with an aging and oft-injured core that left the future murky at best.

>Los Angeles can't undo the mistakes of its past, and is all but guaranteed to miss the playoffs for a sixth consecutive year this fall. But with this trade, they've embraced the rebuild and gained some pieces that could be crucial to making it a success.