This season isn’t going to plan for the Chicago Sky.
The Sky always knew they were taking risks this year. That’s the M.O. for general manager Jeff Pagliocca, who has shown a willingness to act quickly and make major transactions in the hopes of striking gold.
For the first four games, the extensive gambles taken by the front office — not just this season but for years — seemed to be paying off in a surprising 3-1 road trip. But a four-game losing streak, all at home, has quickly cracked open some of the most glaring flaws in this team’s roster construction.
Here are the three risks hurting the Sky the most.
1. Building around injured players
Injuries weren’t a surprise for the Sky. Pagliocca went into this season with the understanding that Courtney Vandersloot wouldn’t be available until mid-June at the earliest. He signed Azurá Stevens — a player with a lengthy injury history — knowing she was still deep in recovery from a bone bruise in her knee. And he picked up DiJonai Carrington, well aware she might not be available until after the FIBA World Cup break from Aug. 31-Sept. 16.
Those three players account for a quarter of the roster and command $2.4 million in total salary, nearly 35% of the Sky’s payroll. Investing this heavily in recovering players places a deep strain on the remaining players — a strain the Sky haven’t been able to manage.
Rickea Jackson’s season-ending ACL tear threw this into perspective. The Sky had zero margin for error. None. They couldn’t absorb the loss of a single player — especially not their leading scorer — because they already were at such a deficit of bodies.
Bouts of illness and small knocks to players such as rookie Gabriela Jaquez have forced the Sky to sign emergency replacement players and lean heavily on development players such as Aicha Coulibaly, who already has used up half of her eligible games for the Sky.
Gambling on the health of an already unhealthy roster also has placed undue burden on veteran point guard Skylar Diggins. At 35, Diggins is still an efficient and creative playmaker, but she and the Sky entered this season with a goal of monitoring her workload to prevent injury and preserve her body.
Instead, Diggins is logging a team-high 30 minutes per game. This isn’t sustainable for the Sky — but neither is the alternative, a directionless pattern of lost minutes whenever Diggins takes a break on the bench.
This issue will ease somewhat when Stevens is cleared to play without a minutes restriction in the coming weeks. But with Carrington and Vandersloot unavailable, the Sky backcourt is stuck in flux — and could remain that way for more than half the season.
2. Relying on Kamilla Cardoso’s ascension
Of all these risks, pouring into Cardoso’s development was the lowest-risk — and most necessary — wager for the Sky. The 6-foot-7 center was the No. 3 pick in the 2024 draft for a reason. Now in her third season, Cardoso still is citing confidence as a key to her growth while averaging 12.9 points, slightly less than last season.
Cardoso isn’t playing poorly by any stretch of the imagination. She leads all WNBA centers in rebounds (9.6 per game) and is sixth in scoring at her position. The Sky have added a new layer to her game in the pick-and-roll with Diggins. But Cardoso still has a propensity to fade out of games, notably scoring only two points in a loss to the Toronto Tempo on Wednesday.
Coach Tyler Marsh often fairly notes that the Sky don’t want to put too much pressure on Cardoso, who still is learning. But it’s also fair to note that the bigs the Sky tend to use as comparisons for Cardoso — A’ja Wilson, Napheesa Collier, Jonquel Jones — were earning All-Star, All-WNBA and Sixth Player of the Year nods by their third seasons.
Every timeline is different. Progress is never linear. But if Cardoso is going to break out, the Sky need it to happen sooner — especially as she reaches the final year of her rookie contract in 2027.
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That starts on the other end of the court. Cardoso is fairly open about her weaknesses on defense, which can overshadow her fairly consistent scoring output. She still hasn’t found her sweet spot for affecting shots around the rim, instead chasing blocks and picking up unnecessary fouls as a result of her instinct to reach. At other times, her defensive engagement and pursuit motor for rebounds sputters and stalls out completely.
There’s no reason to believe Cardoso won’t evolve into a dominant force who can routinely take over games. Her physical profile and high-level footwork could translate into true star power if paired with reliable defense. But that breakout has been slow in coming for the Sky, who need a consistently dominant version of Cardoso to weather their injury woes.
3. Abandoning the 3-point arc (again)
The Sky won’t win games without taking and making 3-pointers. This has been true for three consecutive seasons. They averaged 4.8 made 3-pointers in 2024. That improved slightly to 6.7 in 2025 but has dropped to 5.9 this season.
It’s not even a small comfort that the Sky at least are taking more 3-point shots (23.8 per game, 10th in the 15-team league) because they’re shooting them at such a poor clip (24.7%, last in the league). This situation devolved further with Jackson’s injury, which removed 1.5 made 3s per game from the till.
Both Marsh and Pagliocca have cited the 3-point arc as a clear area of improvement. But in training camp, the Sky still were operating with only two strong shooters in Jackson and Rachel Banham. Sydney Taylor ultimately won a roster spot because of her shooting ability, but the Sky didn’t intend to use her in the main rotation (something that has since occurred because of injuries).
With Jackson hurt, the bulk of the Sky’s 3-point shooting responsibilities have fallen on Banham, who is coming off a career-best year in which she averaged two 3s per game on 35.7% shooting while starting most of the season. The Sky were high on Banham after her strong 2025 performance, but it’s clear they didn’t plan for a potential regression to the mean from a 32-year-old guard who would be returning to a bench role.
Placing this much of a burden on Banham has taken a clear toll. She’s shooting 29.4% behind the arc and has made only 10 3-pointers (1.25 per game), which is still tops among active Sky players. Taylor is the only other player averaging more than one 3 per game. This low volume from the rest of the roster means Banham and Taylor step into a harsh spotlight the moment they come off the bench, further affecting their looks from the arc.
This isn’t the first time the Sky made this mistake in recent history. Marina Mabrey similarly struggled behind the arc when she became the primary shooting option during the disastrous 2024 season.
Before requesting a trade, Mabrey openly opined to reporters that she couldn’t be expected to carry the team’s entire 3-point burden on her shoulders, noting that the imbalance allowed other teams to blitz her at the point of attack and over the top of screens to take away her best angles.
The Sky used to be a decent 3-point shooting team. They never led the league, but the sheer presence of former sharpshooter Allie Quigley — paired with supporting shooters such as Kahleah Copper, Candace Parker and Vandersloot — was enough to keep the team in the middle of league rankings.
If the Sky wanted to keep up in this category, they needed to improve. The WNBA hasn’t experienced a 3-point revolution to quite the same frenzy as the NBA, but change is inevitable. In 2019, the Sky ranked third in the league with 7.3 made 3s per game. In 2026, that number would rank 12th. But even stagnancy would have been better than the current situation, which has flattened the offense into a predictable shell.