The Chicago Sky’s season started with promise, but has quickly gone off track. The team has lost its last five games, with an overall record of 3-6 and no home wins. Though it’s only June and the WNBA season is long, the Sky must find a way to win games or any hopes of a playoff run will soon be far behind them.
Injuries have hit an already precarious roster
The Sky roster has several players who the team knew weren’t going to be available from the first game of the season; Azura Stevens, DiJonai Carrington and Courtney Vandersloot all started the season on the injured list. Still, the Sky were 2-1 and on their way to a win in Minnesota when Rickea Jackson tore her ACL.
The loss of Jackson showed how tight the Sky’s margin for error was. The 6’2 forward was key to those early wins because of how well she, Kamilla Cardoso and Skylar Diggins played off each other. It was easy to look ahead with optimism to Carrington and Stevens’ returns to the team. Stevens’ skill in the paint and Carrington’s defensive prowess could add to what the Sky were cooking.
Instead, losing Jackson made the Sky fall quickly. Every bump and bruise became a cause for concern. Rookie Gabriela Jaquez has missed three games with an unspecified knee injury. Diggins had to miss a game with an eye injury. Chicago doesn’t have much of a cushion to absorb the losses.
Before last Friday’s loss to Minnesota, Natasha Cloud and Cardoso were listed as questionable with an illness. Though they were both able to play, there was a fair chance the Sky were going to have to play with just eight players, including the newly-signed Saylor Poffenbarger.
“It’s part of the job. It’s part of the gig. You accept it. Every team’s going to go through some level of it,” Sky head coach Tyler Marsh said about the injuries and illness befalling his team. “We’re taking our hits right now in bulk, but we got enough to suit up. We’re gonna go out there, we’re gonna play hard, we’re gonna compete.”
Stevens returned last week, but Carrington and Vandersloot’s returns are still up in the air. Carrington refuted a report that said she won’t be back until after the FIBA World Cup break, but the team has not shared a timeline for when she will suit up.
Part of the reason the Sky are in this position is because the roster was built around players whose timelines were uncertain. Jackson and Jaquez’s injuries made it worse, but the problem was already there.
Not doing the little things right
Every WNBA coach talks about how they want their players to be detail oriented — to box out, hit free throws and get into proper defensive position. They want their players to get the basics right because that lays a strong foundation for mastering more complex concepts.
The Sky are falling short here. Take rebounding as one example. Too often, Chicago’s players are not in position for defensive rebounds, and losing battles in offensive rebounding. The team ranks dead last in the league in rebounds allowed by opponents. Their defensive rebounding percentage is 66.4%, ranking 14th in the WNBA.
“We weren’t getting enough stops in that second half, and they continued to dominate the glass, offensive glass, and that halts your ability to get out in transition, and then get into a consistent flow and rhythm,” Marsh said after Tuesday’s loss in Washington.
“Offensive rebounds are draining on a team, and so you gotta be able to limit them to one possession, develop some energy and be able to convert on the other end, and we weren’t able to do that consistently enough today.”
With speedy players Diggins, Cloud and Jaquez on the team, strong rebounding could set up a high-tempo offense. Instead, Chicago is ceding the ball to their opponents too often.
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Shooting woes
There’s not really a fancy, statistics-laden way to say it — Chicago just isn’t scoring enough points. The team is 12th in the league in field goal percentage (40.9%), and last in the league in 3-point percentage (25.7%). They have had good nights, like when they scored 104 against Toronto, but most games have had long stretches of bad shooting, or the good games are paired with bad defense.
“We got to figure it out, and the message was staying with it,” Marsh said after the Toronto loss. “We went searching for an offensive game tonight, and so then we were proud of the numbers that came out in terms of the way we’re able to move the ball and find open teammates and play with that type of pace. We limited them in transition, so we were happy with that. We kept our turnovers down, but from a defensive standpoint, the locker room feels it, and so we can’t be feeling sorry for ourselves. Nobody’s feeling sorry for us.”
Can they fix it?
One thing Sky players and coaches have shown consistently is faith that things will get better, and that everyone can contribute more to stop the team’s losing streak.
“If you talk to [players] one through 14, everyone feels like they can give a little more, they can play a little bit better, coaching staff included,” Marsh said on Tuesday. “That’s not lost amongst us all, but the communication has been in alignment top to bottom in terms of where we’re at and where we’re capable of going and, as long as you’re aligned from that standpoint, I think that there’s room for hope moving forward.”
The problems the Sky are having are absolutely fixable, especially if Carrington and Jaquez can get in the lineup soon. However, fixing problems in between playing games during the punishing WNBA season is not easy.
The Sky host the Connecticut Sun on Friday before traveling to Toronto to play the Tempo on Sunday.
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