LOS ANGELES — Against the Chicago Sky, the Sparks found themselves in a must-win situation, not in the grand scheme of the standings, but for peace of mind. A win to help with confidence and morale.

After a week riddled with injuries and a three-game skid, Sunday’s matchup carried weight beyond the court — it mattered in the locker room. The pressure was starting to show, with visible signs of frustration from head coach Lynne Roberts down to the end of the bench.

The Sparks were a team searching for anything to swing the momentum back in their favor.

That shift came in the form of their superstar, Kelsey Plum, who took it upon herself to ignite the turnaround with a shooting clinic in the third quarter. Her flurry helped lift Los Angeles to a much-needed 91-78 win over the Sky at Crypto.com Arena.

“I’ve been on a mission since I came out of the womb,” Plum said, scoring a team-high 28 points. “You’re just in a different position of being asked to hold more responsibility.”

Despite a back-and-forth start and a 43-39 halftime lead, the question remained: Which version of the Sparks would emerge after the break — the lethargic, disconnected squad or a group finally ready to deliver the full 40-minute effort Roberts has pleaded for?

Out of the locker room, the Sparks found a renewed energy. What followed was a shooting barrage from beyond the arc.

The ever-driven Plum sparked the run — not only by willing her team to victory, but by silencing a heckling courtside fan who, she admitted, lit a fire under her. Fittingly, she was the one who closed out the win, too.

As she let her first left-handed 3 fly, the confidence in her stroke started to build. The second, from the top of the key, came with a signature gesture — Plum pointing to her veins, signaling the ice running through them. Then came the heat check: back-to-back 3s that only added to her fire. A final 3 dropped cleanly through the net, punctuating the outburst.

“I’m here to win,” Plum said. “I was trying to be patient in the first half, and then I knew I had to be a little more aggressive in the third quarter.”

Plum went five for six in the quarter, helping Los Angeles stretch the lead to 76-64 by the end of the third. The Sparks finished eight of 11 from the field in the quarter as a team.

“We haven’t come out after halftime with the best energy, so we’ve really been trying to focus on that,” Azurá Stevens said, who scored 18 of her 24 points in the second half. “KP led the charge — everybody just came out confident in the second half. We’re really hard to guard when we’re doing that.”

The period served as a blueprint for what the new-look system can be when firing on all cylinders — sharing the ball, hitting open shots and locking in defensively.

Roberts pointed to several telling stats that illustrated the win: 24 assists on 31 made field goals, a much more concerted defensive effort that included 12 steals and 13 3-pointers on 27 attempts.

“None of us wants to lose,” Stevens said of the recent frustration. “The games we lost — we could have won them. And that was the most frustrating part we all had to reflect on: they were close games. So, I’m proud of the team. We came out and put a whole game together.”

Like Stevens, Plum left it all on the floor for the Sparks. At one point, she took a shot to the nose and stayed down for a couple of minutes. But after brushing off the injury, Plum returned to the lineup and finished the game, embodying the grit the Sparks desperately needed.

“I love to compete,” Plum said. “I want to play. I want to win so bad — I hate losing. It makes me sick. So, just whatever this team needs.”

After the game, the atmosphere was a dramatic shift from the mood following the recent losses. Roberts, laughing — one of many shared smiles postgame — summed it up simply: “I prefer winning.”

“I just told them in the locker room that we played 40 minutes, and wins are hard to come by in this league,” Roberts added after winning her first home win at Crypto.com Arena. “You can play a good 40 minutes, and the other team is still going to make it uncomfortable.”

But even against the league’s worst scoring offense (66.0 points per game) and defense (96.0), in what seemed like the perfect opportunity to exploit a team with even worse early-season woes, the game unfolded as two physical squads refusing to back down.

Coming in, there was no doubt that low-post anchors Dearica Hamby and Stevens would face a tough challenge, tasked with matching up against Chicago’s frontcourt duo of Kamilla Cardoso and Angel Reese — both boasting a clear advantage in size and length.

“We boxed out as much as we could,” said Stevens, who grabbed a team-high eight rebounds. “When you’re playing teams that have size, it takes a gang effort … Me and D [Hamby] did a good job of just trying to battle them. Like, we’re skinny, but we’re strong too — that’s our advantage.”

In the first half, Hamby and Stevens limited Cardoso and Reese to a combined 12 points and nine rebounds — a small but important victory against a Sky team ranked third in the WNBA in rebounding (39.0 per game).

Hamby finished with 10 points, eight assists, six rebounds and six blocks.

The Sparks’ frontcourt tandem managed to keep the damage manageable, preventing the kind of interior dominance Chicago has leaned on throughout the early season. Reese finished with 13 points and 11 rebounds — her third double-double of the season — while Cardoso added 12 points but was limited to just six boards.

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