LOS ANGELES — Lynne Roberts and UCLA women’s basketball coach Cori Close spent this past Memorial Day weekend together, about a decade after Roberts’ first Pac-12 coaches meeting upon being hired at the University of Utah.
In addition to being opposing coaches, the two have become friends. And on their late May vacation, they sat and watched the WNBA together, trading hypotheticals about how they’d handle certain situations.
Two minds with differing perspectives on basketball, but a shared love for the game, and a similar desire to eventually reach its highest level.
“Honestly,” Close, the UCLA women’s basketball coach, told the Southern California News Group on Wednesday, “her and I talked about how this could be something that we both want down the road. I just was surprised it happened so fast, but she’s ready.”
Roberts was announced as the Sparks’ new head coach Tuesday. She leaves her post at Utah, where she coached for nine seasons and led the Utes to a 3-1 record to start the season. Roberts rebuilt Utah in her image, with her playstyle and offensive system, leading it to the NCAA Tournament in each of the past three seasons and earning Pac-12 Coach of the Year honors in 2023.
In June, Roberts had signed a contract extension to remain at Utah through 2030. The last 10 years of her life, Roberts said, were poured into that place and she remained “100-percent invested in Utah”. So why did Roberts feel now was the time to make this career-leap?
“This is a golden opportunity,” Roberts, 49, said Thursday at her introductory press conference at Crypto.com Arena. “As a competitor, the chance to coach the best players in the world, that’s what I want.”
Roberts, though, proceeded to say she may have not left Utah for another WNBA franchise. She feels the Sparks, being in L.A., offer a premier market for increasing the popularity of women’s basketball and that the franchise has a vision for improving itself. The Sparks have made progress recently, taking steps to source their own practice facility, securing the second overall pick in the 2025 draft, and conducting a “global search” for their next head coach, ultimately landing on Roberts.
Roberts knew Sparks general manager Raegan Pebley from their time coaching against one another in the NCAA. The process to find their new coach started with Pebley and the Sparks’ front office partnering with TurnkeyZRG, a leading executive search firm specializing in sports, media, and entertainment.
The organization held a number of interviews with Roberts and additional candidates before coming to a decision.
“We wanted somebody that would be a developer,” Pebley said Thursday. “And when I say developer, I mean more nurturer, that means you have to be a great leader. So that was the third thing we were really looking for … With Lynne, I say we check, check, check, on all of those; and a basketball mind, who’s forward-thinking.”
Roberts has ideas of how the Sparks can partner with Close at UCLA and Lindsay Gottlieb at USC – head coaches at two top NCAA women’s basketball programs, with whom Roberts has close personal and professional relationships – to optimize the ripe media market in Los Angeles and grow women’s basketball. She wants the Sparks to be the “starship” in that process.
Pebley seconded that notion, explaining how it was a selling point for hiring Roberts.
“That was intentional,” she said. “We were bringing someone into this role that had pre-existing relationships because this is a community of women’s basketball and, quite frankly, women’s athletics that is exceptional.”
Roberts also stood out because of her basketball mind. After her Utes went 5-16 during the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season, she spent time working with the Utah Jazz, attending the NBA team’s practices and speaking with then-coach Quin Snyder to reinvent her system.
“That’s when I did the deep dive analytically about what really translates into winning and women’s basketball,” said Roberts, who was joined at Thursday’s press conference by her wife, Katelin Roberts, and twin sons, Miles and Henry.
She harped on attacks on the rim and paint touches that led to quality 3-point looks. From then on, her Utah teams rarely attempted mid-range shots, instead emphasizing the highest quality shots for points per shot attempt, she said, which is around the rim and 3-pointers.
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Her system, though, is fluid and she will adapt to optimize the Sparks’ personnel. That includes rising second-year players Cameron Brink and Rickea Jackson; post players Dearica Hamby, Azurá Stevens and Li Yueru; key returners Stephanie Talbot and Rae Burrell; and guards Julie Allemand (ankle) and Lexie Brown (Crohn’s disease), who missed the second half of last season.
The Sparks will soon announce their plans for a practice facility in the Los Angeles region after partnering with Transwestern, a national real estate leader.
It’s clear, with all these additions and advancements, that progress being made, and the Sparks believe Roberts is a capable figure at the forefront.