The L.A. Sparks will begin play in the fourth Commissioner’s Cup Sunday with a road game against the Phoenix Mercury.
The WNBA has reconfigured the format of its in-season tournament, designating all games between Saturday and June 13 as Commissioner’s Cup games. Each team will play every other team in its six-team conference once during the competition.
The teams with the best records in Commissioner’s Cup games in each conference will meet for the championship June 25 at the arena of the team with the best record in cup play, with a $500,000 prize pool at stake. Coinbase, the tournament’s presenting sponsor, has committed an additional $120,000 in cryptocurrency to the prize pool, including $5,000 for each player in the championship game.
The WNBA will again make charitable contributions to nonprofit organizations aligned to the teams’ social justice work in connection with Commissioner’s Cup play. The winning team in each game will receive a monetary donation of $3,000 for their chosen local organization while the losing teams will earn $1,000 for their selected organization.
An additional $10,000 donation will be made to the nonprofit organization aligned with the winner of the Commissioner’s Cup Championship and $5,000 will be made to the organization of the runner-up. The donations will be presented to each organization at the conclusion of the Commissioner’s Cup championship.
The 2024 beneficiaries “highlight civic engagement efforts, with an emphasis on the impact of voting on reproductive health matters within communities of color and the LGBTQ+ community,” according to the league.
The Sparks’ designated charity is the Feminist Majority Foundation, which bills itself as “a cutting-edge organization dedicated to women’s equality, reproductive health and non-violence.”
Each Commissioner’s Cup game will be played with a basketball with alternating black and white panels. WNBA games are regularly played with basketballs with alternating orange and white panels.
The Sparks enter Sunday’s play with a 2-5 record, the third-worst in the 12-team league. Only the 2-8 Indiana Fever and 0-8 Washington Mystics have worse records. The Sparks’ only victories have come over the Mystics and the Caitlin Clark-led Fever.
The Mercury are 3-5 and have lost four consecutive games.
The Sparks will be without starting guard Layshia Clarendon for the third consecutive game. She is in the concussion protocol after suffering a head injury last Sunday. The Sparks are 1-1 during her absence.
The 3 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time game will be televised by Spectrum SportsNet.