Candace Parker led the Los Angeles Sparks to a dominant 97-81 victory over the Minnesota Lynx with her fifth consecutive double-double (11 points, 10 rebounds, nine assists), ending the game one assist shy of her second career triple-double. Seimone Augustus, playing for the first time against her former team, scored 13 points on 5-for-9 shooting. Rookie Crystal Dangerfield led the Lynx with 29 points, who were without Sylvia Fowles (calf).

The Los Angeles Sparks came out of the gate hot, scoring a first-quarter season-high of 24 points followed by another 24 points in the second quarter. They shot 69% from the field in the first-half and 60% from the three-point line, the second-best first-half shooting percentage in the league since 2014.

“I think that myself, Chelsea, Nneka, we know that we’re going to bring people,” Candace Parker said after the game. “When we’re able to get rid of [the ball], whether it’s an assist directly or a hockey assist, we play really well when we’re free and we’re moving.”

Once LA got going, they never slowed down with five players scoring in double-figures: Riquna Williams, who scored a season-high 21 points, Sydney Wiese with 15, Augustus with 13, Candace Parker with 11 and Chelsea Gray, who added 10 points and five assists.

The Sparks entered the game knowing they needed to improve on their rebounding, especially against a Minnesota team who is always strong in that area.

“We can’t come back into the locker room at halftime and have a disparity in the rebounding that makes it hard for us to have a chance to win this game,” said head coach Derek Fisher, before the game.

The Sparks finished the game out-rebounding Minnesota 30 to 20 behind the efforts of Candace Parker and Nneka Ogwumike along with a great showing from their bench led by Riquna Williams, helping the Sparks bench score a season-high of 53 points.

“[Players coming off the bench] deserve the credit for being able to perform at such a high level,” Fisher said after the game. “The ball was moving, they looked out for each other on the defensive end. I think that’s the difference for all great teams is being able to have players on your bench that teammates can trust and coaches can trust. And we had a lot of those contributions today”.

The Minnesota Lynx did momentarily take a one-point lead in the third quarter, taking advantage of 20 Sparks turnovers and scoring 36 points off of them. But the Sparks did not cool down, setting multiple records in this game, including the highest field goal percentage in a regular season game in franchise history at 65.5% and the third highest in WNBA history. Individually, Augustus made her 2,426th career field goal passing Tina Charles for fifth all-time in WNBA history.

After the run, LA put their foot on the gas scoring a season-high 31 points in the fourth quarter to close out the game. The Sparks finished the game shooting a season-high 59.1% on 3-pointers (13-for-22), in addition to breaking the franchise record for FG% at 65.517%.

This was the first of four games in the next six days for the Sparks. Los Angeles, now 4-3, will look for their first winning streak when they face the New York Liberty on Tuesday, Aug. 11 at 7 p.m. PT on Spectrum SportsNet.