What Lynne Roberts expects from Kelsey Plum trade acquisition in Sparks debut vs. Sky

With the Los Angeles Sparks continuing their three-game road trip on Wednesday as they visit the Chicago Sky, it will also be Monique Akoa Makani’s debut with the team after being acquired in the trade that sent Kelsey Plum to the Phoenix Mercury over the weekend.

The Sparks have 16 games remaining in the regular season in which they’re still hoping for a playoff push, and prior to the team’s game against the Sky, head coach Lynne Roberts spoke about what goes in to getting a new player like Monique Akoa Makani acclimated in her debut in a relatively short amount of time.

“It’s film, it’s walkthroughs. We have not practiced the last two days just to try to get some rest, but we’ve done some court work with some of our lower minutes guys. We had shootaround today, so it’s just as much as we can, getting her out there with teammates acclimating, film and talking,” Roberts said during her pregame press conference. You also don’t want to overload to where they feel overwhelmed like, ‘holy crap, this is way too much.’ So the basics defensively, the basics offensively, and then just build. You want her to have some comfort level in the principles and the foundation stuff and then build from there.”

Akoa Makani had a bit of a late start to the 2026 season as she was still playing with her overseas club. She made her 2026 debut on May 26, moving immediately into the starting lineup for the Mercury and finishing with a well-rounded stat line of nine points, two rebounds, four assists and two steals.

Prior to the trade, she had appeared in 19 games for the Mercury, including 16 starts, at a little over 23 minutes per game. She was averaging a career-best 9.4 points, 2.1 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.2 steals with splits of 43.9 percent shooting from the field, 43.6 percent from the 3-point line and 86.4 percent shooting from the free-throw line.

Akoa Makani will come off the bench for the Sparks in her debut, and Roberts is well aware of how impactful she can be when she’s out on the court.

“I told her today, we’ll coach you through it. Just don’t hold back. Just be yourself out there. We know what she can do … I think she‘s really good, I’m super excited about having her. She’s a combo guard, she can play the one … she can play the two, And then just defensively she’s going to make us better right away,” Roberts said. “We’ve had three days with her, she’s picking things up really fast. I’m sure there’s going to be an acclimation process for her to where she’s fully not thinking. I think the point is to get players to where they’re not thinking and they’re just playing with each other.

“There’s that chemistry that I think the rest of the team, we’ve hit that place. It’s going to take her a minute, but I told her, we’ll coach you through it, don’t worry about it. So we’re going to play her and throw her out there and play her quite a bit.”

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