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Mark Walter doesn’t need to sell the Sparks. It said so in a release from his company Wednesday: “TWG is not looking to sell its sports assets at ‘fire sale’ prices to raise capital for its insurance operations.”
Not because of the investigations into allegations that insurance companies under Walter’s umbrella failed to properly disclose and conduct transactions between other companies he controls.
But for the sake of the storied WNBA franchise, which hasn’t won a championship in a decade and is about to miss the playoffs for the sixth consecutive season — something that would have been unthinkable six seasons ago.
Sell for the sake of the Sparks, who have long deserved an owner who wants seriously to run the team like Walter’s group runs, well, the Dodgers.
With passion and pride, foresight and smarts.
And, yes, the new $150-million training facility that’s going to open in El Segundo next year is a better-late-than-never step in that direction.
It’s not too little; the 64,000-square-foot space, which will be tremendous in a prime location near the beach and shopping.
But it’s very late. Wednesday’s topping-out ceremony, when a construction crew lifted the final structural beam into place, doesn’t change that.
While so many of the Sparks’ rivals have had the upper hand in recruiting and retaining talent with state-of-the-art private practice spaces for the past few years, the Sparks have been — to use star forward Nneka Ogwumike’s word — “nomads.”
The Sparks have always offered fans a famously fun game-day experience, but their players had to continually get familiar with facilities all over Southern California, from L.A. Southwest and El Camino College to Academy USA in Glendale to Jump Beyond Sports in Torrance, from Windward School and Galen Center to JR286, the gym in Torrance where they practice now.
Starting next season, they’ll have a home.
But it’s not because the Sparks’ ownership wanted to do what Mark Davis did with the Las Vegas Aces when he was the first owner to provide fancy new digs in 2023.
Not because they were resolute about giving the Sparks a first-class experience, like Joe Tsai did when he chartered flights for New York Liberty before the league said it was legal, getting himself fined $500,000.
