Kelsey Plum lands core qualifying offer from Sparks

Monday marked the first day that WNBA teams could designate core tags as well as extend qualifying offers to free agents. While the WNBA free agency period doesn’t officially begin until Wednesday, there was a flurry of activity this week with the Los Angeles Sparks among the teams making moves by extending a core qualifying offer to Kelsey Plum.

With the core designation, the Sparks awarded themselves exclusive negotiating rights with Kelsey Plum during the WNBA free agency period. The offer would start at the new supermax of approximately $1.5 million as per the new CBA. While core designations automatically begin at one year, the Sparks and Plum can negotiate a longer contract if desired.

In addition to the Plum designation, the Sparks also extended reserved qualifying offers to free agents Rae Burrell, Julie Vanloo and Alissa Pili. The qualifying offer also gives the Sparks exclusive negotiating rights with each player, and the offer is for the league minimum. Under the new CBA the league minimum has risen to approximately $270,000.

The 2025 season was Plum’s first with the Sparks, and first with a new franchise after spending the first eight years of her WNBA career with the Las Vegas Aces franchise. In fact, Plum was actually drafted by the team when they were still the San Antonio Stars as the No. 1 pick in the 2017 WNBA Draft.

The Sparks acquired Plum last offseason in a sign-and-trade as part of a larger deal that included the Aces and Seattle Storm. In her first season with the team, Plum appeared in 43 of 44 games at a little over 35 minutes per game. She averaged a 19.5 points, 3.1 rebounds, 5.7 assists and 1.2 steals with splits of 42.2 percent shooting from the field, 35.5 percent shooting from the 3-point line and 89.3 percent shooting from the free-throw line.

The Sparks finished last season at 21-23 and missed the playoffs for the fifth consecutive season. However, the team did show marked improvement in the second half of the season under new head coach Lynne Roberts.

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