Sports
'Take my story back': How Layshia Clarendon earned redemption with the Sparks
Layshia Clarendon wasn’t used to having free time in the summer. Usually around this time, they would be in the middle of the grind of a WNBA season, a grueling schedule that consisted of games, practices and treatment, which didn’t leave much room for anything else. But then in 2022, Clarendon was cut by the Minnesota Lynx.
Clarendon spent the summer at home in the Bay Area, savoring every moment of a season they hadn’t experienced in more than 10 years. Hanging out with family, being on a boat, going to music festivals and the market. For Clarendon, it was a beautiful, if rare, time.
“I was like, ‘Wow, this is what everyone does in the summer?’ This is so much fun,” said Clarendon , who identifies as non-binary. “… People are really outside.”
Yet there were also dark days.
Clarendon normally loves to follow the WNBAout of a pure love of the game and the league. But in that 2022 summer, Clarendon couldn’t watch a game.
“It was just too hard,” said Clarendon, who is 33.
It was the first time since entering the league in 2013 that Clarendon wasn’t on a team. Despite a successful 2021 season in Minnesota, Clarendon began to question if their career was over. If they could still play the game at a high enough level. For the first time, Clarendon was truly wondering if they had enough left in the tank, had enough drive and energy.
“People don’t talk about that a lot … just the volatility of this league … how much perseverance you have to have to play in this league,” said Clarendon, who begins her second season with the Sparks and 11th in the WNBA on Wednesday night in the season opener against Atlanta. “It’s really difficult emotionally and physically.”
It was ultimately Clarendon’s child, known publicly as Baby C, who helped them through depression by playing together on a Little Tikes hoop. Baby C would pass the ball, and Clarendon would shoot.
In these small moments, seeing Baby C’s joy from playing basketball, reminded Clarendon of their own passion for the game. Love for the competition. Love for everything about the game. This was their game.
“No matter what anyone does, or what any GM has to say, I play this game,” said Clarendon, who starred at Cajon High in San Bernardino before playing at California. “I get to take control of my narrative. I get to come back and make this L.A. team and take my story back.”
Sparks head coach Curt Miller was honest with Clarendon when they were invited to training camp.
“It’s going to be a competitive camp,” Clarendon recalls him saying. “But show us what you got.”
Sparks guard Layshia Clarendon is fired up during a game against the Mercury last season.
(Jeff Lewis / Associated Press)
Clarendon was fully betting on themselves. They knew they had to prove they were good enough to make the team, but they had come to realize that every year was a tryout in the WNBA. Clarendon wasn’t taking that for granted anymore.
They not only made the final roster for the Sparks, but they reminded everyone of their skills. Clarendon had arguably the best season of their career in 2023 with career highs in three-point percentage, free-throw percentage and steals. They also averaged 11.1 points, their highest since their lone All-Star season in 2017.
Clarendon also emerged as a leader for the Sparks, a theme that has reoccurred not just through their WNBA career, but really throughout life.
“I think it really just comes from who I am, and my deep love for people,” Clarendon said. “I love people, I love this game, and I want to make people better. I think that’s the best thing a point guard can be because … ultimately, it’s your job to make everyone around you better.”
A lot of people might think of a leader as the center of attention, but that’s not Clarendon. For them, being a leader is about attention to detail. It’s about making a cut on the court because they know it’ll get someone else open. It’s about sending a text to teammates who were waived. It’s about being a mentor to Aari McDonald and showing her the ropes as a young point guard. It’s about building relationships and showing up for people off the court.
She’ll help lead a team with two prized rookies in center Cameron Brink and forward Rickea Jackson, who were selected second and fourth, respectively, in the draft this summer.
“I’ve played every role in this league,” Clarendon said. “I know what it’s like when you’re a bench player, I know what it’s like when you’re a starter. I know what it’s like when you don’t play a lot of minutes and have to do cardio afterwards. I know what it’s like to be the person everyone’s looking at.”
Clarendon knows this won’t last forever, but they make the most of it by being deeply present in every moment.
“Age is coming for everybody, even Sue Bird,” Clarendon joked.
They look for the beauty in the moments between the grueling training camp practices. Things like connecting with a trainer during treatment, sharing jokes with teammates, getting hyped when they make a big shot, or talking trash in the middle of an intense scrimmage.
“Things like that make the joy and the fun between the game, really fun,” Clarendon said. “I just try and enjoy the moment.”
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There haven’t been this many Dodgers fans in New York since the team moved out of Brooklyn in 1957.
The LA Dodgers are in the Bronx this weekend for a highly anticipated series against the New York Yankees. It’s one of the oldest rivalries in the game.
When the Dodgers were in Brooklyn, they faced the Yankees in the World Series eight times.
They’ve met three times in the Fall Classic since the move, and their 11 meetings are the most ever between any two teams despite not meeting there since 1981.
The Los Angeles Dodgers logo on a bag before a game between the Washington Nationals and Dodgers at Nationals Park April 24, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (G Fiume/Getty Images)
Friday night had a postseason atmosphere in the Dodgers’ 2-1, 11-inning victory, and Dodger fans were scattered throughout Yankee Stadium.
But there was an invasion on Saturday.
A photo of numerous Dodgers fans lined up outside Billy’s Sports Bar surfaced just before 2 p.m. Saturday, close to six hours before first pitch.
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The group then received a police escort on the walk to the stadium gates.
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It turns out the invasion is from the Dodgers’ fan group, Pantone 294, named after the shade of blue that is the Dodgers’ primary color. The group also made the trip to the Bronx in 2016.
The FOX broadcast said that 5,000 members of the group were a part of the Bronx takeover.
Fans walk to Yankee Stadium before a game between the New York Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays April 5, 2024, in New York City. (Dustin Satloff/Getty Images)
YANKEES-DODGERS SPLIT MERCHANDISE PROMPTS FIERCE FAN REACTION: ‘THIS SHOULD BE A FELONY’
The group is similar to a Mets fan group called The 7 Line, named for the subway train that stops at Citi Field.
The Dodgers got the first laugh Friday night, ending the Yanks’ eight-game winning streak.
Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers scores a run in the 11th inning against the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium June 7, 2024, in New York City. The Dodgers defeated the Yankees 2-1 in eleven innings. (Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
Yankees pitcher Nestor Cortes opposes the Dodgers’ Gavin Stone in Saturday’s game.
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NEW YORK — This is what the baseball world was desperate to see.
Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge trading big hits early. Two talent-rich lineups keeping opposing pitchers under constant stress. And the sport’s two most star-studded squads turning a routine June weekend into a gripping midseason spectacle.
A day after neither team scored a run until the 11th inning, the Dodgers and New York Yankees traded early jabs in a back-and-forth game Saturday night, before the Dodgers ultimately pulled away late for an 11-3, series-clinching win.
Teoscar Hernández had the biggest night, collecting six RBIs and two home runs, including an eighth-inning grand slam that served as the knockout blow.
“I like to be in the spotlight, the pressure, those big situations,” Hernández said. “That’s what we play for.”
The result, however, was just as memorable as the scene that surrounded it.
For a sport that struggles to draw national attention and doesn’t lend itself to many show-stopping series over an annual 162-game grind, this weekend’s matchup provided a much-needed “shot in the arm,” as Dodgers manager Dave Roberts put it Friday.
Teoscar Hernández celebrates after hitting a grand slam against the Yankees in the eighth inning Saturday.
(Frank Franklin II / Associated Press)
And if the series opener was a tense, tactical extra-innings marathon, Saturday offered more of the power-packed prize fight everyone around Major League Baseball was hoping to see this weekend.
“This is a little bit different,” first baseman Freddie Freeman said in an on-field interview with Fox moments before first pitch, having to lean in to hear reporter Ken Rosenthal’s question over the buzz of the crowd in the Bronx. “It’s exciting.”
For the first seven innings, the two teams traded body blows to keep the score tight.
Hernández followed his winning double Friday night with a second-inning solo blast into the Dodgers bullpen to open the scoring.
The Yankees (45-21) quickly countered, knotting the score on two singles and a run-scoring grounder in the bottom of the inning.
In the third, Ohtani lined an RBI single the other way, putting the Dodgers ahead 2-1. Minutes later, Judge came to the plate and smacked a center-cut sinker just over the left-field wall, leveling the score again.
“It was a tight ballgame for quite some time,” Roberts said.
Kiké Hernández celebrates after hitting a home run for the Dodgers in the fifth inning Saturday against the Yankees.
(Frank Franklin II / Associated Press)
The Dodgers (41-25), however, eventually took control.
They regained the lead on Kiké Hernández’s solo home run in the fifth. They tacked on another run in the sixth, when Freeman hit a leadoff double to left that ex-Dodger Alex Verdugo badly misplayed.
Then, in perhaps the biggest sequence of the night, with the Dodgers leading 4-2 in the sixth, left-handed reliever Alex Vesia escaped a bases-loaded jam, then returned to the mound in the seventh and retired Verdugo, Judge and Giancarlo Stanton in order — including a strikeout of Judge on three whiffed fastballs.
“Felt like it was a shift of momentum for us,” Vesia said, “which was awesome.”
Teoscar Hernández made sure of that with his grand slam in the top of the eighth, setting off a raucous celebration in the bullpen (where his home run ball again landed), dugout (where Vesia jumped up from his seat and held an index finger to the sky) and stands (where waves of blue-clad Dodgers fans erupted as many Yankees faithful quietly filed out).
Dodgers reliever Alex Vesia delivers during the seventh inning Saturday against the Yankees.
(Frank Franklin II / Associated Press)
“You don’t take over Yankee Stadium too often,” Roberts said. “But they did a good job of letting us know they were here.”
This series hasn’t been everything baseball fans hoped for, not with Yankees star Juan Soto out of the lineup again Saturday, and unlikely to play in Sunday night’s finale, because of a forearm injury.
It will still count as only three games in the standings, as well — relatively low stakes for a first-place team such as the Dodgers enjoying a healthy eight-game lead in the National League West.
Just don’t tell that to the thousands of fans who packed the ballpark, a lagging baseball industry at large looking for an early June spark, and a Dodgers team flexing their muscles against the club with the most wins in the majors.
“I think coming in here was a shot in the arm for our guys,” Roberts said, nodding in agreement when asked if the weekend has thus far met the hype. “To play a different opponent, to come in here and what it means to play in this stadium, it’s fun to see our guys play with a little bit more focus.”
Sports
Caitlin Clark snubbed from Olympic roster partly due to potential backlash over limited playing time: report
USA Basketball’s expected decision to leave Indiana Fever rookie Caitlin Clark off the roster for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris was met with questions Saturday morning, but one report shed some light on the decision.
Citing two sources, USA Today columnist Christine Brennan reported one factor in omitting Clark from the women’s national team was the concern about how the former Iowa star’s fans would react to her playing time in the Olympics, which would likely have been limited.
Caitlin Clark at the WNBA Draft at the Brooklyn Academy of Music April 15, 2024, in New York, N.Y. (Cora Veltman/Sportico via Getty Images)
Brennan described those sources as “long-time U.S. basketball veterans with decades of experience in the women’s game.”
Reports of the decision were met with fierce backlash on social media, and, as Brennan points out, seemingly confirmed the narrative that not everyone in the WNBA is pleased with Clark’s popularity.
“If true, that would be an extraordinary admission of the existence of real tension that the old guard of women’s basketball harbors for this multimillion-dollar sensation,” Brennan wrote of the sources’ knowledge.
Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever during the 2024 Commissioner’s Cup game against the New York Liberty June 2, 2024, in Brooklyn, N.Y. (Catalina Fragoso/NBAE via Getty Images)
WNBA STAR CAITLIN CLARK EXPECTED TO BE LEFT OFF TEAM USA’S OLYMPIC ROSTER: REPORTS
Clark was invited to the national team’s training camp in April, but because of the Iowa Hawkeyes’ success in reaching the women’s final in the NCAA tournament, she was unable to attend.
Nine other Olympians were invited to camp, including five-time gold medalist Diana Taurasi of the Phoenix Mercury, who is expected to return. Fever teammate Aliyah Boston was also invited to join the national team’s training roster in April.
Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark brings the ball up court against the Chicago Sky June 1, 2024, at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. (Brian Spurlock/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Clark has won three gold medals with USA Basketball junior national teams, including her latest with the 2021 USA Women’s U19 National Team.
The U.S. women have won every gold medal in women’s basketball since the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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