CHICAGO — At Foster Park on the south side of Chicago, a group of tween girls in matching blue shirts grabbed paint brushes as the Chicago Sky’s drumline played. The girls painted a regulation WNBA three-point line in bright orange on the basketball court as part of the league’s Line ‘Em Up initiative.
The line was finished by Chicago’s mayor Brandon Johnson. He then announced that the City of Chicago and the Sky Foundation were giving 500 tickets to the Three-Point Contest and Skills Competition on Friday night, part of the All-Star Weekend hosted by Chicago.
“We’re bringing in youth here from the basketball camps, bringing in girls from the neighborhood, and letting them know that these courts belong to them,” Awvee Storey, the head of the Chicago Sky’s Foundation, said to IX Sports.
The Sky are adding these three-point lines on courts around Chicago. Storey said the goal is to do 13 courts this season and a total of 30 over the next few years.
A common phrase heard among WNBA players is “You’ve got to see it to be it,” so having a reminder of the importance of dreaming big is great. Giving away tickets to kids is also great.
But the whole event felt a bit like a consolation prize. About eight miles northwest of Foster Park, construction continued at the Wintrust Sports Complex in Bedford Park, a suburb just south of Midway Airport. It will be the home of the Chicago Sky’s practice facility.
When the Sky were first announced as hosts of the 2026 All-Star Game, the practice facility was supposed to host parts of the weekend’s festivities. Much as the Phoenix Mercury did in 2024, the Sky could have used the All-Star Weekend to show off the new facility to media, league officials and players — including potential free agents.
Instead, construction is still going on at the facility. The Sky broke ground on the project in the fall of 2024. Initially, the Sky said the facility would be open in the fall of 2025.
When the design changed to allow for a better court orientation, and amenities players asked for, the date was pushed back again. Still, the Sky used the promise of the practice facility to lure free agents like Skylar Diggins and Azurá Stevens to Chicago.
Earlier this year, Chicago’s training camp was held at the University of Illinois-Chicago, and the opening date was said to be late spring, early summer. Last week, Sky general manager Jeff Pagliocca shared that the team would finish off the season practicing at Wintrust Arena, Chicago’s home court.
“We have made a decision that we will remain at Wintrust to practice for the rest of this season,” Pagliocca said to media on Friday. “There’s value in practicing where you play, and without the facility being at 100 percent completion, we feel like it’s best to make sure when we go in, we go in giving them the experience that we wanted them to have from day one.”
Construction is notoriously difficult in Chicagoland because of the unpredictable weather. Supply chain issues played a part, as well, but the bigger problem was how the scope of the facility changed over time.
“There were multiple iterations of what the building would look like, and as we continued to see the evolution and what was happening and what we envisioned in the future, we started to think: Could we do this? Could it be possible?” Adam Fox, the Sky’s CEO and president, said to The IX Sports. “And you start bringing in the basketball operations people. You bring in some player feedback, and you start to think of and imagine what you can do. And then all of a sudden, it starts adding more and more things.”
Now, the Sky are aiming for a November opening. The hope, according to Pagliocca, is to have a spot for players who are staying in-market to practice in the offseason, and have a showpiece to take potential free agents for the 2027 season.
But a ribbon-cutting in November, a month after the 2026 WNBA champion is crowned, feels like such a missed opportunity. The 2026 WNBA All-Star Weekend is supposed to be a showcase of Chicago as a basketball town. With a 9-17 record, no All-Stars and unfinished practice facility, the Sky aren’t making the splash they had hoped to.
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