Watch basketball games for a living and you develop a certain tolerance for garbage—a fondness, even. Bad teams make visible all the neat and complicated parts of the sport. In an “I can fix them” sort of way, these teams are sometimes the most endearing. It's hard to look at even the WNBA’s worst without finding something to grasp, some little thread of hope.
Alas, I’m drawing a blank with the Chicago Sky, who are 2-6, both of those wins over the league-worst 1-10 Dallas Wings. In retrospect, the Sky’s disastrous start to the season makes perfect sense. An offense that ranked near the bottom of the league in 2024 lost its leading scorer in the offseason. At the trade deadline last year, it also lost its second-best scorer. The Sky locker room might be more functional for the absence of Chennedy Carter and Marina Mabrey, but the two of them did score points! It is also a team theoretically built to feature two non-shooting bigs, one of whom is currently the league’s worst finisher.
What makes less sense is that the Sky front office ever saw this situation so optimistically. “We had pretty big, significant expectations for this season. That’s why I made the moves I made,” general manager Jeff Pagliocca told the Chicago Sun-Times before the Sky’s 85-66 loss to the Liberty on Tuesday night. He was referring to a set of “win-now” trades and signings in the offseason: The Sky traded their first-round pick in this year’s draft, plus a 2027 pick swap, to the Mystics in exchange for a year of veteran Ariel Atkins. (The Mystics used the pick to draft Sonia Citron, who has proven an immediately capable two-way rotation player.) In the aftermath of February’s Connecticut-Phoenix-Dallas mega-trade, they also “rescued” wing Bec Allen from the tanking Sun. The backcourt was stocked with more free-agent veterans: Courtney Vandersloot in a homecoming signing, and one-time All-Star Kia Nurse.
Trying to win is a noble goal. It's the kindest thing a team can do for fans and for young players, to whom veterans provide stability and guidance. But veteran presence helps less when the veterans are bad. For all the team’s emphasis on rebuilding the backcourt, the Sky have the league’s highest turnover rate, the worst assist-to-turnover ratio and a 29.8 three-point percentage, better only than the Sun and the Valkyries—respectively, a team with no intention of winning and a team assembled from the scrap heap. When Chicago’s perimeter defenders are blown by—which they are, a lot—it can actually feel like a tiny win: Under new head coach Tyler Marsh, the team’s rotations get so mangled that their opponents are shooting 40 percent from three. Angel Reese and Kamilla Cardoso look worse and more tentative on both sides of the ball. Right now, the Sky are kind of terrible at everything, which leaves them in an embarrassing place to be: neither as compelling, nor as capable as an expansion team.
It speaks to the sad state of things that the 19-point loss to the Liberty was actually one of Chicago's more encouraging games. Reese played her best game of the season, holding her own in a matchup against Breanna Stewart, delivering on the little passing and transition scoring flashes that make her an interesting player for all her shooting flaws. By her own admission, she has struggled this season, and the non-threat posed by the Sky guards certainly hasn’t helped. “I have bad days. I haven’t been playing well at all. And I could sit here and mope around and point the finger, but it’s been me,” she said in the postgame presser. Earlier in the interview, Atkins had piped up to defend Reese—another reason it's nice to have vets around.
As fans of hopeless teams know, things can always get worse, and often they do. In last Saturday’s game against the Fever, Vandersloot suffered an ACL tear that will end her season and maybe her career. Already at pains to move and hold onto the ball, the Sky will need to figure out new options at point guard. (They did draft Hailey Van Lith in April, but at this point in her career, she’s still overmatched as a starter.)
For many teams, the coming offseason and free-agent bonanza promises a fresh start. But the Sky don’t have many levers to pull. The only thing they have ever done to make themselves an attractive free-agent destination was to be located in the state where Candace Parker grew up. They owe their first-round pick to the Lynx this year, though they’ll have another chance at the lottery thanks to the Connecticut Sun, who gave up 2026 swap rights in the Mabrey trade. The Sun might also be their best hope at a third win when they play on Sunday.
At Pagliocca’s press conference at Sky media day in May, basketball writer Nekias Duncan asked the second-year general manager what he’d learned about the league last year “from a roster construction standpoint or a play style standpoint.” It was a good question, one I thought all the league’s general managers ought to be asking themselves after last year’s Finals, which underscored the value of versatility, shooting, depth, and good pro scouting. Pagliocca’s answer—about the “importance of balance”—was vague and not wholly satisfying. He added, “I think that this league is so competitive that every decision has a lot of weight to it.” That part is true.
