As Angel Reese returns to Chicago with Dream, Sky work to re-imagine their future

Sky general manager Jeff Pagliocca believes his first step in the process of making Chicago competitive was dealing Reese to the Dream. Despite what the Sky gave up to get Reese in 2024, her pairing with center Kamilla Cardoso, whom the Sky selected No. 3 in 2024, proved not to be a long-term fit in their two seasons together.

Pagliocca’s rebuild continued with a flurry of noteworthy free agency moves this offseason — including trading for Rickea Jackson and Jacy Sheldon, signing Skylar Diggins and Azurá Stevens to multiyear deals and DiJonai Carrington for one year — resulting in arguably the best on-paper roster the Sky have had in four seasons. But potential isn’t enough to cleanse this franchise of its previous missteps or to redefine it after Reese’s departure.

Only one remedy is capable of tackling that Herculean task: winning.

“Sometimes, you have to keep the incremental goals as the gauge for where you want to be ultimately,” Sky coach Tyler Marsh told The Athletic last week. “It’s literally a day-by-day, week-by-week, game-by-game process of playing to a standard and working to a standard that will hopefully breed championship results down the line.”

The Sky’s first and only title was won five years ago. Veteran guard Courtney Vandersloot and Stevens were key pieces on that team and are back on the roster after choosing to have stints elsewhere, serving as a bridge from that championship past to where it hopes to be again.

Pagliocca has roughly a week to finalize his 12-player roster, plus two developmental spots, before the start of the season because of a truncated offseason for all WNBA teams after the collective bargaining agreement negotiations. But the presumptive starting five, anchored in the backcourt by Diggins, Sheldon and Jackson with Stevens and Cardoso at the four and five, gives the Sky the speed and athleticism it hasn’t had the past two seasons.

But it will be weeks before Marsh can test the full potential of this roster as several players navigate early injuries. Vandersloot continues rehabbing a torn ACL in her right knee, and Stevens is working through a minor stress injury in her left knee. There is no timeline for Vandersloot’s return, but Stevens expects to be available “pretty early in the season,” she told reporters during the first week of camp.

Carrington, meanwhile, has been absent through training camp following a procedure to remove hardware from her left foot. The surgery, completed earlier this month, was a follow-up to one she had in the offseason to address a season-ending left foot injury she sustained while playing for the Minnesota Lynx. Marsh said Carrington’s timeline to return to play is to be determined. The Sky were aware of Carrington’s status when they signed her, emphasizing their expectation that she will have a substantial impact once available.

Offensively, nothing will mirror what the Sky did last year. The congestion inside with Reese and Cardoso having similar styles of play will be gone as the Sky look to play a four-out offense with shooters at the four spot. On defense, they will be defined by disruption and physicality. Part of the high priority placed on acquiring Sheldon — who like Cardoso and Jackson, is under contract through next season — was her defensive capabilities.

The team Pagliocca put together now doesn’t look like the title team, either, but the ethos behind its construction does.

The Sky’s championship season “was something that was grown over the years,” Vandersloot said. “We got the right people in place, the people that were bought into what we were trying to do, (who) were sacrificing for one another. It’s all the things we’re trying to build. It’s not just about getting the best players here. It’s about getting the right people, people that want to be here.”

Between 2023 and 2025, the list of players who wanted to be in Chicago was short.

The Sky’s entire starting five in 2022, outside of Kahleah Copper, left in free agency in 2023, including Candace Parker. Their decisions were layered, but all of them, at various points, mentioned operational standards.

Even former coach and general manager James Wade strained under the franchise’s limitations, serving as the last person in the dual role in the WNBA in 2023 before he resigned 16 games in to take an assistant coaching position with the NBA’s Toronto Raptors. The Sky’s shortcomings were exacerbated by the evolution of franchises across the league.

In Las Vegas, owner Mark Davis was building the league’s first state-of-the-art practice facility. A year later, the Phoenix Mercury debuted their own. The New York Liberty still doesn’t have its own practice facility, but the standards in Brooklyn have been heralded by players, including former members of the Sky, over the last three years.

Before Wade left, he shared that the Sky were beginning to scout locations for their own practice facility. Almost three years later, it’s still not complete. The project was announced in 2024, and after facing delays, is expected to be ready for the Sky’s use by “late spring/early summer,” franchise leadership has continued to say.

But Chicago’s inability to keep up with the shifting hierarchy didn’t pertain solely to facility issues; it showed itself in the incomplete coaching search that resulted in Teresa Weatherspoon’s hire and subsequent firing after one season.

The Sky won the news conference that fall when the team announced her hire. But the Sky would proceed to lose not only games, but players in the months that followed. Before the 2024 season began, Copper asked to be traded. Pagliocca obliged, sending the 2021 WNBA Finals MVP to the Mercury, regaining lost draft capital, including the 2024 No. 3 overall draft pick, which he used to select Cardoso.

Halfway through that season, Marina Mabrey demanded a trade, saying at the time that playing for the Connecticut Sun, where she landed, was a “better situation.” Reese was a vocal supporter of Weatherspoon’s, sharing on social media that she was “heartbroken” by the Sky’s decision to fire her coach.

Last year’s Sky season, like the one before, devolved into chaos by the end. Injuries hampered the trajectory of what was expected to be a competitive season. Pagliocca gambled when he traded the 2025 No. 3 pick, the 2027 second-round pick and the rights to swap 2027 first-round picks for guard Ariel Atkins.

He defends that trade often, pointing to injuries that derailed the Sky’s playoff contention hopes. But frustration clearly set in near the end of the season, when Reese was critical of Marsh and her teammates in a Chicago Tribune article, stating the Sky couldn’t rely on Vandersloot, (then 36) to return “at the age she’s at” and expressing a desire to be coached harder.

The Sky suspended Reese for half a game, but she never played another minute after the story published on Sept. 3, although the Sky cited an injury as a reason for her absence in the final 2 1/2 games. During the final home game on Sept. 11, fans at Wintrust Arena held posters supporting Reese and some chanted “Fire Jeff.”

An emotional player meeting had followed Reese’s public critiques. Vandersloot also publicly defended her abilities during a pregame broadcast, saying, “contrary to what people think, my age is actually not a factor.”

Seven months later, Vandersloot now says, “If I could do it all again, I’d probably handle it differently.”

Pagliocca said he thinks Reese and teammates could have repaired their relationship, but ultimately asserted that the trade benefited both parties as he sees the incoming players’ potential to take the Sky further.

“You have to take a hard look at the roster. As far as (the Cardoso and Reese) pairing, there were a lot of games where they played extremely well together. But systems change, people change, coaching staffs change and we have to make sure that we’re (getting) the players that are going to fit the best in Tyler’s system,” Pagliocca said.

After the Sky lost in the semifinals in 2016 and fired their longest-tenured coach of six seasons, Pokey Chatman, they went on a two-year skid, missing the playoffs for consecutive seasons. In 2019, they rebounded, making it to the second round of the playoffs before losing to the Aces.

This season doesn’t need to replicate that turnaround, but there’s a playoff expectation because of the roster Pagliocca constructed and what (and notably who) he gave up to do it.

“We know there’s a level of trust that we have to earn with our fan base, the community, the city,” Marsh said. “I’m not shy about that. We’re not shy about that. But for us, we want to have the opportunity to continue to grow as an organization.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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