Los Angeles Sparks head coach Curt Miller will be the first to tell you that this season, he has not pressed the right buttons to get this rendition of the team to overachieve.
Miller knows what it feels like to lose sleep over a team. He's been in the game long enough to understand the weight that settles into your bones after a season doesn't go the way you planned. But this one felt different. There is something about this particular group, this particular city, where losing is intolerable and losing teams go unsupported and that keeps him tossing and turning more than usual.
In his South Bay home, a place he cherishes for its quiet corners and cool ocean breeze, Miller often replays how the season has unfolded in his mind. He remembers how the Sparks squandered another lead on a critical fourth-quarter run, scrolls through the moments where it all seemed to slip away, and then rewinds, searching for that elusive decision, that one button he could've pushed differently. Miller isn't one for excuses. If anything, he is his harshest critic, always owning up when he feels he hasn't done enough.
"I just haven't always pushed the right buttons," Miller admitted to himself and later to the press. It isn't just a coach speaking and searching for answers. It is the raw, unfiltered truth. His team has battled, fought, and given their all, but too often, they've fallen just short of the finish line. For three, maybe even three and a half quarters, the Sparks compete, exhibiting the grit that has typified Miller and his teams, blow for blow, matching up with the league's best. But the team falters when the game clock winds down and the pressure mounts. And that losing, in this fashion, appears to eat at him, gnawing at the recesses of his mind into the late of night.
The truth is it isn't just about the wins and losses. Sure, they matter. They always will. But this season has been about more than basketball. For lack of a better word, Miller walked into a situation that is a mess. The franchise was in disarray and tumult when he arrived, and despite all his experience, despite all his success back in Connecticut, rebuilding something like this was never going to be easy; Angelinos and fans should understand that. But there is something about LA, this city's endless optimism, and how your worst days and crestfallen moments can be doused and drowned out in the Los Angeles sunshine, that makes Miller believe in the long game. He can feel it beneath the frustration, beneath the mounting losses. The roots are starting to take hold.
He reflects on his conversations with his players on the practice court at El Camino College and in the bowels of Crypto.com arena, in the intimacy of the locker room, eyes still hopeful, bodies worn, pushing through to the season's end. He sees something in them. It isn't just talent-every player in this league, all 144 of them, are talented. No, it is something deeper, something more resilient. These women haven't stopped working despite everything they'd been through. They show up to practice every day, prepared, committed, determined. Even when the results aren't there, they don't waver. And that, to Miller, is everything. "I just want them to experience joy again," Miller said. "I just want them to feel that win because they deserve it."
That's what keeps him going. It isn't the accolades; it isn't even proving the critics wrong, though, he'd be lying if he said that didn't fuel him just a bit. It Is them. The players who show up for one another fight through fatigue, injuries and the creeping doubts that come with every loss. He wants to win for them. They have great hearts and spirits, and it pains and perturbs him to see them walk off the court with their heads down, game after game.
But this season isn't just about the on-court struggles. It is about everything off the court, too. Miller has felt the ugliness rear its head this year, the insidious undercurrent of hatred, misogyny and bigotry that has seeped into the public sphere and bubbled up as women's sports have begun to gain the recognition it deserves. It is a strange thing, this simultaneous rise of the game, reaching unprecedented heights of popularity, while the vitriol and racism come slithering in through the cracks like an oily snake. He's been around the game long enough to have seen it before, but it never gets easier.
"There's no place for it," Miller said, reflecting on the fresh round of hate-filled DMs sent by keyboard warriors. "No place for the hatred, no place for the bigotry."
It is a strange irony, really. Miller is in his 35th year in the game, at the apex of his profession, a man who has earned the respect of his peers, yet here he is, receiving hate not for a botched timeout, not for a poor game plan, but for simply being himself–a gay man in professional sports. He knows it isn't just about him. He is accustomed to the slurs, the anonymous taunts from nameless, faceless social media accounts. But it isn't himself he worries and pours over; it's the women in his locker room, the young players who might not yet have the armor he's built and acquired over the years.
Miller has seen the ugly side of basketball, but he has also seen its beauty-the sisterhood, the unity, the way these women have each other's backs through everything. And that collective identity and strength are worth fighting for. That's what compels him to pour over hours of game footage and to show up every day, regardless of how bleak the scoreboard may look. That's what makes him stand tall, even when the world seems intent on tearing him and these women down.
For all the sleepless nights, frustration, and moments where doubt infiltrates like a Navy Seal, Miller knows one thing: they are building something here in this organization. The roots have taken hold and are more robust than anyone can see from the outside. It isn't flashy. It isn't the kind of progress that makes headlines and it is only a matter of time before it yields fruit. "We'll get there," Miller said. "We're going to get there."
It is about the work behind the scenes, the stuff no one sees. The meetings, the candor in difficult conversations, the quiet and public encouragements, the belief that hasn't wavered even when results did. It is about building something that lasts, can weather the storms, and comes out stronger on the other side. It's about igniting a spark. When it happens, when the wins start coming in droves, when the joy returns to that locker room and the arena, Curt Miller knows it will be worth every sleepless night.
The Sparks finished the regular WNBA season with a last place record of 8-32.
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