Before a season-ending injury, Number Two draft pick Cameron Brink was hoping to help L.A.’s WNBA team capitalize on the growing love for women’s sports and cut down some nets along the way

Life was coming at Cameron Brink pretty fast.

In late March, the 22-year-old was in college at Stanford. Two months later, she was setting the internet on fire wearing SKIMS and hanging out with Kim Kardashian.

But that’s what happens to a woman’s college basketball star in the year 2024. Especially when that star lands in Los Angeles.

In April, Brink was drafted by the WNBA’s L.A. Sparks with the second overall pick,  joined by the University of Tennessee’s Rickea Jackson at fourth. Caitlin Clark, the woman drafted ahead of Brink and Jackson by the Indiana Fever with the top overall pick, has helped ignite an explosion of popularity for women’s basketball.

Brink and the Sparks are hoping to get in on the fun while also bringing another championship to a franchise that has won three titles but missed the playoffs for the last three years.

“I love Caitlin. She’s my girl,” Brink told Los Angeles magazine a few days before the season started. “But like everyone’s going to be in Indiana. Everyone’s going to be in Chicago for Angel [Reese]. But it’s the same here. West Coast basketball … doesn’t have as much hype as East Coast. So just hopefully [we’re] getting people to realize that we’re like that.”

Born to basketball-playing parents who went on to work at Nike, Brink was raised in Portland alongside basketball royalty. Her god-brother is NBA megastar Stephen Curry — his mom was at the Sparks’ first game — and he is vocal in his support on social media. The two even FaceTimed just before Brink was selected by the Sparks at the draft. So the glamorous, chaotic and demanding life of a professional basketball player is not foreign to Brink.

But it can still be a lot.

After Brink’s Stanford team lost to North Carolina State in March in the Sweet 16 of this year’s women’s NCAA tournament, Brink spent a few days with her family in Portland before flying to Cleveland to accept the James Naismith Defensive Player of the Year award. Then it was on to Brooklyn for the draft. Then Springfield, Massachusetts for the USA 3-on-3 Women’s national team training camp.

“And then … gosh I don’t even remember,” Brink said. “From there, [I] went straight to training camp, which has been a whirlwind.”

Less than two months after playing her final college game, Brink was a professional athlete in the City of Angels. And it didn’t take long for her to learn what that meant.

“This is probably bad, but I was jaywalking yesterday with [teammate] Rae [Burrell],” Brink said laughing. “We were crossing the street, and this lady literally stops her car in the middle of the street and is like yelling at us out the window. She’s like ‘I know you!’”

Then it happened again. Outside a pop-up in the Hollywood Hills, Brink was shocked to hear a passenger on a tour bus yell, “It’s Cameron Brink!”

And Brink seems ready for her star turn. She already has 324,000 followers on TikTok and 847,000 followers on Instagram. The picture she posted of herself before the home opener, in an Alexander Wang outfit the New York Post called a “fiery fit,” got about 180,000 likes. She and Jackson teamed up to throw out the first pitch at a Dodger game.

“It’s kind of crazy how much I’ve been recognized in public,” she said. “Even at Stanford it wasn’t like that. So I think so many people watched the draft. So many people are going to start watching these games.”

That seems like a safe bet right now. With Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese’s epic battles helping to lead the way, women’s college basketball is drawing more attention and more eyeballs than ever before. During the NCAA tournament, Clark’s Iowa team set a record with 12.3 million viewers when they took on Angel Reese’s LSU team in a rematch of last year’s title game. Two days later, Iowa broke that record when they took on UConn and 14.2 million people tuned in. And then the women’s championship game brought in more television viewers than the men’s game for the first time ever with 18.9 million people tuning in to watch the South Carolina Gamecocks beat Iowa to cut down the nets. And with phenomenal USC sophomore-to-be Juju Watkins waiting in the wings, those numbers could keep going up.

A few days before the season started, the Sparks announced that their game against Clark’s Fever in late May was being moved to Crypto.com Arena to accommodate more fans. Other WNBA teams have also moved to larger venues in anticipation of Clark’s arrival in town even as she faces a rocky adjustment to the league.

But the ever polite Brink bristles slightly at the notion that women’s basketball is having a moment, suggesting that women’s basketball has always been a force. Only now more people are realizing it.

“I think this is such a pivotal year for the W, and I think [fans] are going to be kind of awoken to the fact that it’s been like this,” she said.

Brink is clearly a competitor first and foremost. Despite foul trouble during the Sparks season opener against the Atlanta Dream, the power forward impacts the game early and jumps off the bench to cheer and celebrate her teammates with boundless enthusiasm. She finished her first game with 11 points, four assists, two rebounds and two blocks.

That night after the game, Brink and the rest of the Sparks team welcome two special visitors in the locker room.

Kim Kardashian and her daughter, North, have been sitting courtside for the home opener, which is at Cal State University in Long Beach. Brink is one of the faces of Kardashian’s SKIMS underwear and clothing line, the official underwear of the WNBA. The evidence of Brink’s burgeoning modeling career was displayed on the big screen during the game, and she told L.A. the day the ad campaign was released that she loved the experience and hopes to do more of that kind of work in the future.

Magic Johnson, a co-owner of the Sparks, was also at the game. So was Saturday Night Live alum Leslie Jones. The journalist Jemele Hill was in attendance, too. For John W. Davis, the bigger names represent a moment of opportunity for the Sparks and for women’s basketball.

Davis has been covering the Sparks as a beat reporter for the past six years. He’s seen celebrities at the games before. But Kim Kardashian making the trip to a 4,000-person capacity college gym in Long Beach for a season opener on a Wednesday night was a new one for him.

“To start off at a smaller venue and still have that type of crowd, that type of support, I think the environment is changing,” Davis said. “It’s up to the Sparks to capitalize on it.”

And Davis said he thinks Brink can help them do that “because at the end of the day if the Sparks really want to capitalize on the growth of women’s basketball, they have to win. … And Cameron Brink is the kind of player that you can build a team around.”

And then in June, tragedy struck. In the first quarter of a game against the Connecticut Sun, Brink went down and had to be helped to the locker room. She did not return, and the team announced the next day that Brink had torn her ACL. Season over. Instead of going to the Olympics, Brink will watch from home while teammate Dearica Hamby takes her spot.

“You never think it will happen to you,” Brink said in an Instagram post the next day. “And despite all the hard work sometimes it does. This is hard to fathom but I know it will only make me stronger. I will not be derailed and I will continue to love this life — I’m not defined by basketball, but it is something that I love deeply and I will work everyday to get back to it.”

So for now the waiting game continues. Rickea Jackson, the team’s fourth pick in the draft, is an early bright spot for the Sparks, but with Brink out for an undetermined amount of time, it looks like the Sparks’ championship drought is going to last a little longer.

The team’s last championship came in 2016. Fans of the franchise were spoiled early on by star Lisa Leslie and then hero Candace Parker. Brink has a long way to go before she’s mentioned in the same breath as those two players, but Davis wouldn’t rule it out.

“This is the first time this team has not had a bona fide superstar,” Davis said. “You can’t say [Brink] is that right now, but you can say she has the potential to be it.”

This year’s WNBA draft was loaded, and there was a wide array of opinions on who the Sparks should take with their first pick given that Clark was guaranteed to go first.

Fans like Kevin Brown and Jasmine Ashley, whose relationship started over their mutual love of the Sparks, thought a player like LSU’s Reese or South Carolina’s Kamilla Cardoso might help them win more games. But with Brink as the pick, the couple was standing in line in Long Beach, clad in Sparks gear and eager to lay eyes on the newest team members.

“I want to see us be more aggressive and be more defensive, which Cameron brings all of that,” Brown said. “So I’m excited to see how she’s going to take over. I expect big things for her being she’s our number two pick. And we had a lot of talent in this year’s draft class. And we went with her, so she’s got to deliver.”

Davis explained that winning teams in the WNBA have a “core four” of elite level players. Without that nucleus, the other teams are just pretenders. The Sparks are clearly rebuilding, but they think Brink and Jackson can be two of those members. And it doesn’t hurt that they are social media stars who were born into a digital world.

“She has already fashioned herself as an entertainer,” Davis said of Brink. “And what better team to join than the one in the entertainment capital of the world?”

But while Brink said she is eager to explore different opportunities that are unique to L.A., she said she isn’t worried about being distracted by the allure and trappings of the city.

“I think because I’m a pro now, when you’re in season you’re in season. Keep the main thing the main thing,” she said. “But I think the offseason will be more of a whirlwind because I’ll be more open to doing more stuff. But I think I know very much that I’m a professional basketball player now, and this is my main job so stay focused on that.”

Some fans are already convinced.

Eight-year-old Julia Becerra was standing in line with her Girl Scout Troop outside of Walter Pyramid when Troop Leader Elsie Heredia asked her who her favorite player was.

“Cameron Brink,” Becerra answered shyly.

Why?

“I like watching basketball,” Becerra said. “And she’s my favorite player, and she’s exciting.”

Both Brink and Jackson, the team’s fourth pick in the draft and a back-up to Brink at the start of the season, said they hadn’t experienced much of L.A. before they were drafted by the Sparks. Brink had spent a little time in Laguna Beach, and Jackson has a godfather who lives in the Valley.

“I really like it,” Brink said. “I like the vibes, the food. Everyone’s cool.”

Added Jackson: “I love L.A. Everything about it.”

For Sparks fans, Brink said before the season and before her injury that she hopes to win this season. For non-Sparks fans, she had a message: “Tell them to get on the bandwagon.”

“It’s just fun,” she said. “Like we’re a fun team. Already two weeks into playing with each other, we have great chemistry. I just love these girls.

“Just come watch. Come see.”

But fans won’t be able to see Brink. At least not for a little while.

“It’s not goodbye basketball it’s just a see you later,” Brink said.