The Chicago Sky Have Nothing To Look Forward To

Technically, the Chicago Sky are not the worst team in the WNBA right now by record; that honor would belong to either of the teams with one fewer win, the Connecticut Sun or the Seattle Storm. But after Monday's WNBA slate, which featured the Sky's 92-63 loss to the Sun, and Seattle's much more competitive 112-110 loss to the Dallas Wings, the distinction feels like one without a difference. What do you call a team that loses to the worst team in the WNBA by 29 points? The Sky have been bad for the better part of four years now, but for a hopeful sliver of this summer, they weren't. Last year's roster had been overhauled, the bad vibes cast aside by trades and free agency. If the big picture was a little hazy, the names weren't: A trade for Rickea Jackson quickly filled the star vacuum left by trading Angel Reese; veteran free agents Skylar Diggins and Natasha Cloud gave the team some needed depth at point guard; signing Azurá Stevens promised more spacing for Kamilla Cardoso. Their season began with four straight games on the road; they returned to Chicago an impressive 3-1, with wins against the contending Valkyries and Lynx. Still, the homecoming was bittersweet. Minutes into the final game of the road trip in Minnesota, Jackson had torn her ACL. The Sky did rally to win that game, even down their leading scorer. They've won just one of their 12 games since. This is the Chicago Sky's story at its simplest: a promising team aimless without its star, derailed by plain misfortune. It might well be the story that grants general manager Jeff Pagliocca and head coach Tyler Marsh more time in their jobs. But every night the Sky play, it gets harder to believe the story is true. In the history of basketball, you will find many good teams that have sustained good play in the absence of a top scorer. Often the reason those teams are good is because they are not so otherwise flawed as to immediately be felled by one player’s absence.