After nearly two months of missed games and knee rehabilitation, the Chicago Sky made it official on Tuesday. Skylar Diggins will miss the rest of the 2026 season with a knee injury she reaggravated in June.
“Since I’ve been out, [I’ve been] rigorously working on trying to get back on the floor,” Diggins said in a media availability Tuesday. “Trying to get back to practice, trying to get back with my teammates, been pretty much working parallel with the team. We’ve been in lockstep as far as communication this whole time.”
Diggins had surgery on her knee in October 2025. She played for Unrivaled in the offseason, then became one of the Sky’s biggest offseason signings.
Once the season started in May, Diggins averaged 14.2 points and 4.9 assists per game. For most of the time she played, the Sky’s longtime point guard Courtney Vandersloot was rehabbing an ACL tear.
Vandersloot returned on June 26. On July 6, Diggins posted on Instagram “Now I’m benched???” She was added to the injury report for the Sky’s July 7 game in Las Vegas, and didn’t play again this season.
She called the timing of her injury and rehabilitation “layered.”
“I had been playing through a lot. Obviously, we had already been doing testing [on her knee] well before that road trip. I was very limited in practice. I was limited in shootarounds,” Diggins said. “I was supposed to be on a minutes restriction even before that road trip, and so I see how a lot of those things could seem like [the timing was related to the benching] after reflecting. But you know, I hadn’t been feeling like myself out there, and our situation, whatever that was, whatever decision Tyler was making for me and and with the organization has always been prioritizing my health.”
Diggins is far from the only Sky player to miss several games due to injury. The IX Sports’ Lucas Seehafer found that Chicago leads the league in games missed due to injury with 123. Only two Sky players, Jacy Sheldon and Elizabeth Williams, have played in all 40 of the Sky’s games.
Rickea Jackson played in just four games before tearing her ACL. Gabriela Jaquez missed four games with an injury, and Sydney Taylor missed seven.
Beyond injuries sustained this season, the Sky chose to sign three players who started the season on the injured list: Vandersloot, Dijonai Carrington and Azurá Stevens. All three are veterans who could have provided the leadership the team needed.
Diggins pointed out how that many missed games, especially from veterans, can affect a team’s chemistry.
“It’s not just players being out, but who is out and and those vets, and how we could use their voice on the floor, and how it changes,” Diggins said. “Obviously, your impact that you can make. When you’re off the floor, you try to do as best as you can. But obviously, we talk about ability and its availability.”
Vandersloot missed 17 games, Stevens missed nine and Carrington has only played in 11 games. Each has made an impact on their return, but the Sky’s record had taken too much of a hit to make the postseason a real aspiration.
Instead, the team is looking to next season, when its practice facility is expected to be open. Diggins did most her rehab at Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., her alma mater and home town that’s just an hour and a half from Chicago.
The Sky’s practice facility was originally supposed to be open before the 2026 season, and then was pushed back to midseason before the team announced it wouldn’t be ready until after the conclusion of the current season.
Not having a facility means the Sky had to use area colleges and Wintrust Arena for practices.
“I think a lot of us were promised that we thought that [the facility would open this season], and so that would be the biggest frustration with this season, just never feeling like we had a home base with that,” Diggins said. “Sometimes we have limits or restrictions or how many hours we could be there [at other practice venues], and that affects everything. When you’re trying to be a pro and get in what you need, and so I don’t anticipate that next year.”
Diggins says she expects to be back with the Chicago Sky in 2027.
“We’ve never had any talks with the organization or about trades or wanting a trade or anything like that during this process. We’ve been really close in communication with everything that’s been going on and everything that I’ve been doing, and so we’ve talked about one of the big reasons why we’re shutting this down is to prioritize my health and for the future and for the future with this organization,” she said. “But no, I haven’t had any or expressed any desire to not talk about me in a Chicago Sky jersey next year.”
