It’s the fourth quarter of a tense, close bout in Los Angeles between the hometown Sparks and the Indiana Fever,The game has serious playoff implications for both teams, so every bucket feels fraught, and it’s going down to the wire,Cameron Brink, the 6ft 4in second-year Sparks center with an unmistakable Rapunzel-esque blonde braid has fouled out of the game, but you wouldn’t know it from her enthusiasm on the bench,No one is clapping harder, cheering louder, for her teammates,That’s fundamental to who Brink is, according to everyone I talk to around the team in their final push for the playoffs in recent weeks – the Sparks are in a battle with Seattle Storm for the final spot.

Brink is one of the brightest young stars in the W, securing a slew of endorsements (including a high-profile deal with New Balance which made her the first female basketball player on their talent roster), but Brink is a far cry from the myopic, self-centered stereotype of a star.“One thing I’ve noticed about her, she’s really intentional about including niche groups of people,” teammate Azurá Stevens tells me.“I think that’s a really cool trait that she has, with all her notoriety.” Is that unusual for someone with Brink’s profile, I ask? “I think sometimes when people have a certain status, they don’t always think of everybody.So I think for her having the status that she has and to always want everybody to feel included, fans, people in general, I think that’s really cool.

”Brink, a highly touted recruit out of Stanford who went No 2 overall in last year’s WNBA draft, had a promising start to her rookie season, starting the first 15 games for the Sparks.But the hot start was cut jarringly short when she tore her ACL in mid-June 2024, leading to a 13-month absence from the court.The forced hiatus was a curse, of course, but also something of a blessing.It allowed the now 23-year-old a moment for introspection, and time to explore some of her non-basketball interests.“I definitely just kind of explored a lot of areas of my life, it made me really realize how finite basketball is in the grand scheme of things,” Brink tells me in Los Angeles.

“It’s something that I’m realistically only going to do for, probably, 15 years at most.So it really kind of … Honestly, I was kind of on this spiritual journey of figuring out, you know, who I am outside of basketball.”Those other interests have been diverse dating back to childhood, she says.“I saw myself being an artist, or someone creative,” Brink tells me of her youthful aspirations, pre-basketball career.“I grew up in a really loving, free household so they kind of didn’t force me into anything.

I loved pottery, pastels, all that kind of stuff.My parents always sent me to art camp, and I would definitely try every kind of medium; I was just super, super creative.”In addition to a penchant for the visual arts (which has manifested, of late, as an interest in fashion), Brink’s creative streak was expressed behind the mic this year with Straight to Cam, a podcast she co-hosts with her god-sister Sydel Curry (sister to NBA players Stephen and Seth Curry).It was an experience she relished, but one she is taking a break from in order to shift her focus.That focus? Basketball, and figuring out how to make a true impact in the world, something that has become of increasing importance to the Oregon native.

“I’m actually taking a break from the podcast, which, it was honestly one of the best experiences of my life,” she tells me.“It was just time-consuming, and I feel like I just want to pour all of my energy into basketball.I do think, in the future, I [would] love having a platform to talk about things [again].But I think I want to move towards helping marginalized groups, working maybe more so in fashion, maybe working [for example] on shoes that fit people that aren’t in the normal size range, or clothing.I think I’m still really trying to figure out my niche.

I love doing the podcast, I just feel like I don’t need to have that kind of platform right now,I can try and do things and work behind the scenes, and really focus on the on-court stuff, and the rest can flow from there,”In a year of big questions and meaningful introspection, Brink has successfully “kept the main thing the main thing”, Sparks head coach Lynne Roberts tells me,I ask what advice she had, if any, for Brink in coming back from such a severe injury, as such a high-profile young athlete,“I just told her, try to take some air out of the tires, not put so much pressure,” she says.

“It’s hard to come back from being out 13 months, it’s not gonna come back like riding a bike.It’s gonna take a bit.” Roberts is impressed, she tells me, with the focus and intensity with which Brink has bounced back, with her capacity to compartmentalize and tune out the noise.“She wants to be great.And I think there’s a lot more she can do, and she can make a lot of money, but she wants to be great at basketball.

”Even coming from a basketball family, being “great at basketball” and the pursuit therein wasn’t always necessarily in the cards for Brink, who said in a recent interview, “I tried to put off loving basketball for as long as possible, but falling for it was inevitable.” But absence does tend to make the heart grow fonder, and her time away only served to crystallize her love and passion for the sport.“It was really eye-opening,” Brink tells me of her time on the sidelines, and the self-discovery and expansiveness that came with it.“But I think I just really missed basketball, and I came back just guns a-blazing, missing it so much.”Off the court, Brink has been a vocal advocate for mental health.

She has spoken about her own struggles on Philadelphia 76ers star Paul George’s podcast, Podcast P – an appearance she says led Wave Sports, the show’s production company, to approach her with the idea of hosting her own podcast, which became Straight to Cam.I ask her if she plans to use her newfound media platform to continue that advocacy, or incorporate other avenues to do so.“I don’t know, I think instead of just talking about it, [I want to be] actually doing things to help facilitate some change, I don’t know exactly what that is right now and it’s easy for me to say, but I’m kind of tired of being in front of the camera but not actually trying to do anything,” she says.“I want to figure out ways to try and involve myself.It’s hard, I’m really trying to just get through the rest of the season, but after the season, I’m really excited to kind of go on some journeys to figure out what really fuels me, what really makes me feel as satisfied as I feel playing basketball.

”The answer is revealing of both the odyssey of self-discovery she’s traversed over the past year and a half, and Brink as a person: she is, at once, an incredibly intelligent and passionate woman with big ambitions and the world at her fingertips, and, also, a 23-year-old who is still just learning who she is, and doing so in the spotlight.