LOS ANGELES — Until a recent six-game winning streak, it has been a brutal season for the Sparks, losses layered on injuries layered on losses. And Tuesday night’s game ended unhappily, a chance to move closer to an unlikely WNBA playoff spot foiled when they couldn’t close the deal against their closest pursuer, Chicago.

But if the past is indeed precedent, good times might indeed be ahead, if delayed.

“This reminds me so much of my foundational build year in Connecticut, my first year in Connecticut,” Sparks coach Curt Miller said before his team’s 76-75 loss to Chicago, in which it had the ball with 22.8 seconds left but had three shots at the winning basket fail to drop.

Miller, hired along with General Manager Karen Bryant to resuscitate a faltering franchise, was named head coach of the Connecticut Sun in 2016, after 13 seasons as a college head coach (Bowling Green, Indiana) and a year as a Sparks assistant in 2015 under Brian Agler.

His first Connecticut team was 14-20 and missed the playoffs by two games.

“But we played well after the All-Star break, (and) in fact, had a top-four record after the All-Star break,” he recalled. “Despite not making the playoffs, that momentum really helped us in Connecticut make the playoffs six straight years.

“So the same thing here. You know, the playoffs will play itself out. We can only control what we can control. But as long as we’re playing well, I feel the momentum is building towards next year and ultimately the future, and what I’m so excited about.”

Yeah, there have been some extenuating circumstances with the current team.

The Sparks are now 15-20 and clinging to the eighth and final playoff spot, a half-game ahead of Chicago (which owns the tiebreaker, having won three of the teams’ four regular-season meetings). L.A. has five games left, beginning Thursday night at home against Seattle, as well as a game in hand on Chicago.

The Sparks also have a hefty injured list, which has been the case for much of the season. Miller ran through 15 different lineups early. Lexie Brown, a former Duke star and the daughter of former NBA player Dee Brown, has missed 23 games and is out for the rest of the season with a non-COVID illness that has had her in and out of the hospital. Chiney Ogwumike has missed 25 games with a foot injury. Second-year guard Nia Clouden has missed 27 games with a knee injury.

The inactivity isn’t totally bad news. Katie Lou Samuelson’s status on the injury list changed from “pregnancy” to “maternity” after she welcomed baby daughter Aliya Renae Cannady into the world on Aug. 4.

Still, from a 15-woman roster, Sparks players have missed a combined 141 games.

“It felt like we had a different injury or illness that we were managing and pivoting all the time from,” Miller said. “We fell into, knock on wood, a consistent rotation, which allowed us to build some continuity and chemistry. … Just getting minutes together in the first year of a foundational build, finding time and court time together was essential. It led to that (recent) six-game winning streak, and we felt really good about ourselves.”

Perhaps the most critical absences have been those of Layshia Clarendon, the veteran guard from Cal and San Bernardino’s Cajon High, who missed 13 games (June 11-July 12) with a plantar fascia injury and sat out Tuesday night’s game because of “health and safety protocols,” according to the Sparks’ injury report.

Clarendon’s veteran savvy and physicality, as well as the ability to take some of the burden off of point guard Jordin Canada, makes an impact. How so? The Sparks are 12-8 (.600) with Clarendon and 3-12 (.200) without. Team MVP? You can make a strong case.

The silver lining is that this group doesn’t seem like it was ever discouraged, even after losing eight in a row and 11 of 13 to put themselves 2½ games out of a playoff spot on Aug. 4 with a 9-18 record. Right after that, they won six in a row to get back into playoff position.

“Something that we always try to focus on is just being in the moment, and focus and respect the opportunity in front of us,” eight-time All-Star and former MVP Nneka Ogwumike said. “Obviously playoffs are looming and of course that’s in the back of your mind, but just honoring each game, honoring each day, to have the opportunity to compete together, I think, is something that we just kind of really focus on.”

Center Azura Stevens, who signed this season as a free agent, noted that it easily could have gone the other way.

“It’s easy, I think, individually to just check out and be like, ‘All right, screw this.’ We’ve lost some games, we’ve had some injuries, we’re traveling like crazy,” she said at Tuesday morning’s shootaround. “But I mean, if you put in the work, I’m just a firm believer that things will work out for you and we’ve done that.”

It seems like they’ve talked these things out among themselves. Stevens noted that there are no assurances, given the WNBA’s roster churn, that this group will return anything close to intact, so “we really emphasized that when we were losing, ‘OK, let’s just stick together no matter what and enjoy each other.’”

And as Canada, the former UCLA and Windward High star, put it:

“We understand we have 40 games this season and that’s a lot. And we can’t look at the first 15 games and go, ‘Oh my God, we have a terrible record,’ like this is (what it’s going to be) the rest of the way.”

They’ve persevered. They’re here. And while the tiebreaker might have slipped away, they still control their fate, for now.

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