Azurá Stevens’ return to the Chicago Sky has hit bumps early in the season. She started the season on the injured list with a bone bruise to her knee, delaying her first game back with the team she won a championship with in 2021. She had to work hard to find the positives in her situation.
“I [was] trying to focus on pouring my negative feelings into positive energy and really just using that in my approach every day,” Stevens told The IX Basketball.
After the Sky lost Rickea Jackson to an ACL tear, the team needed Stevens’ return even more. With a minutes restriction in place, she was able to play for the first time in the 2026 season on May 23 in the Sky’s loss to the Minnesota Lynx.
She took some time to find her rhythm, but managed double-doubles in back-to-back games against the Connecticut Sun (13 points, 10 rebounds) and Toronto Tempo (18 points, 10 rebounds) in early June. In Chicago’s overtime loss to Indiana on June 11, she scored 10 points and grabbed nine rebounds. All of her hard work was validated by those results.
“There’s been a lot of days I’ve wanted to just kind of give up,” Stevens said. “I felt down, and it’s just difficult dealing with an injury, especially when you don’t really have time to just rest it. That’s kind of what is the most needed thing, but obviously, you know, I’m not going to do that right now. So it was really tough, but I think these last couple of games, feeling more comfortable, has really been confidence-giving to me, and speaks to the work that I’ve been putting in to get myself back to this point.”
The Sky are 4-8, and have struggled in rebounding this season. The team is averaging 33.1 rebounds per game, ninth in the league, and last in defensive rebounding percentage at 63.5%.
Though her first few games back weren’t huge in the statistics categories, Stevens averaged nine boards a game in her last four games. Stevens’ return to being a more assertive player has been welcomed by head coach Tyler Marsh.
“She’s been just a more aggressive Azurá, and I think that’s been largely due to her just feeling more comfortable with where she’s at individually and more comfortable where we’re at as a team, in terms of how she fits in,” Marsh said. “A more aggressive Azurá has been to the benefit of all of us.”
Rehabilitating an injury can also take a mental toll. Stevens said she relied on her community and didn’t hold back when times were rough.
“Leaning on my support system, my family, some of my closest friends,” Stevens said. “Just really leaning on them and being open, like, ‘Hey, this really sucked, this is hard, this is tough,’ and being able to have a place where I can get that out, and move forward, and be like, what am I going to do with that, am I going to soak in this, or am I going to be like, okay, it’s hard, but let me control what I can control.”
She also turned to her therapist for help.
“I have a mental health therapist that I work with on the weekly, so that’s really helped me a lot, and then just, you know, like I said, focusing on what I can control.”
Listen now to The IX Sports Podcast and Women’s Sports Daily
We are excited to announce the launch of TWO new podcasts for all the women’s sports fans out there looking for a daily dose of women’s sports news and analysis. Stream on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or anywhere you listen to podcasts, and make sure to subscribe!
Now that she is back on the court, she is still working through a minutes restriction. Stevens started with playing around 15 minutes, and now she’s up to around 22 minutes per game. Limited time has pushed Stevens to rethink her time on the court.
“It kind of pushes me to be really efficient, because I can’t just afford to make a bunch of mistakes, because I have a limited amount of time,” Stevens said. “I’ve tried to approach it that way. What can I learn from this, and I can learn how to be more efficient in the minutes that I have?”
Efficiency and aggressiveness from Stevens may not be enough to reverse the Sky’s early-season woes, but it’s a good start as the team tries to climb up the WNBA standings and finish out close games with a win.
