‘She taught us some things’: Sparks’ Lexie Brown fills in as TV commentator during loss to Lynx
Lexie Brown knew what she was talking about.
But she worried no one else would.
The veteran Sparks guard, who has been sidelined since late June with Crohn’s disease, made her debut as a color commentator during the Spectrum SportsNet broadcast of her team’s 82-67 loss to the Minnesota Lynx on Tuesday at Crypto.com Arena.
Midway through the first quarter, Brown said, “You do not want to give your teammates grenades” — and then realized they probably had no idea why she was talking about explosive weaponry. She explained that was when a player gets the ball with just a few ticks left on the shot clock.
Days later, Brown laughed when reminded about that part of the broadcast.
”That was a funny moment,” she said, “because sometimes you say things and then you’re like, ‘Oh, shoot, they probably don’t even know what that means.’ I’m sure people were confused when I said that.”
Dearica Hamby has 27 points and five assists while Rickea Jackson contributes 23 points and seven rebounds in the victory at Dallas.
Sparks play-by-play announcer Rahshaun Haylock loved that Brown “dropped some lingo on the broadcast.”
“She taught us some things,” said Haylock, who correctly used the terminology later in the game. “I always wondered how teammates felt about that when they would get the ball with just a couple of seconds left and would have to heave something up at the basket. I thought that was really cool we got to learn what the name was.”
Brown, who has appeared as an analyst on Spectrum SportsNet’s studio show for the Lakers and is a regular on the “No Chill With Gilbert Arenas” podcast, was approached to fill in as a commentator on the Sparks broadcast during the team shootaround on the morning of the game.
“I was like, ‘Sure, why not?’” said Brown, who hopes to return to the court in August following the WNBA’s break for the Olympics. “I mean, might as well get some experience doing other things while I’m sitting on the sideline.”
She had little time to prepare, but Brown said she didn’t need it.
“I know so much about all these teams and all these players being in the league for seven years now, I didn’t need too much preparation,” said Brown, who is in her third season with the Sparks. “Maybe like some statistical things that I could drop in every now and then, but for the most part everything was kind of off the top of my head.”
Haylock said Brown was a natural.
Rivals Caitlin Clark of the Fever and Angel Reese of the Sky will be teammates as WNBA All-Stars. Their team plays the U.S. Olympic squad before the Paris Games.
“Some of my interactions with players or analysts doing it for the first time, they’re not really sure when to jump in or not to. There’s always some hesitancy there in the beginning,” Haylock said. “But with Lexie there was none of that. ... Even with the timing and having never done it before, she found her spaces to jump in seamlessly and it worked out great.”
Haylock added: “I thought she provided tremendous insight. She took us inside the huddle, she took us inside the locker room, she gave us insights to her teammates, what they go through on the floor. So I thought she did a great job.”
Brown said her goal as a commentator was to “try to be as uplifting as possible.”
“Being a current player you can’t really be too hypercritical or too nitpicky about either team because these are my teammates and these are also people I gotta see on the court still,” she said. “So I was just trying to keep it light, keep it fun and just give people a different outlook to the game.”
The game was a tough one for the Sparks, but forward Dearica Hamby reached 3,000 career points with a layup late in the third quarter. Play didn’t stop, so Brown’s commentary on her teammate’s accomplishment was quick but enthusiastic (“3,000! Dearica! That’s a lot of buckets!”).
Now in her second season in L.A. after being traded from Las Vegas and giving birth to her second child, Dearica Hamby is off to a fast start for the Sparks.
“I was just really excited to be able to celebrate her on the call,” Brown said.
While she enjoyed her night as an in-game analyst, Brown said she’s not sure that will be the career path she follows once she’s done playing.
“I personally right now love being in the podcast space and I love being in studio,” she said. “So if I have the opportunity to continue to do the podcast stuff, be in studio, that’s probably where I will go initially.
“But if there are any one-off opportunities for me to get back in the commentating space, get a little more practice to see if I really like it — if I can maybe do some college games where I don’t have any teammates or opponents on the floor where I can really get into my commentating that way — then maybe that will be something I would like to do in the future.”
