Sydney Taylor commands her own momentum.
This becomes obvious the moment the Chicago Sky guard begins to move downhill. Once in motion, Taylor doesn’t rely on anyone’s propulsion but her own. She slips from side to side, head swiveling to locate her defender.
When the contact is too close, she balances the ball on her fingertips like a dish on a platter, waiting to be served smoothly into the basket. Taylor is particularly skilled at wriggling away from the defense, but when an opponent steps in her lane, she invites and incites contact, eager to outplay her somewhat unassuming 5-foot-9 frame.
Taylor likes to say it’s the New York in her. She grew up on Long Island, where any hooper worth their salt needs to add a little flair to stand out. In that environment, Taylor learned how a one-on-one could transform into a solo performance. There’s not much difference between the hardwood of a basketball court and the wooden platform of a stage. And to Taylor, the best players always put on a little bit of a show.
“That’s why I am the way I am,” she told the Tribune in August. “My confidence, the way I play, the smoothness, that’s where it all comes from.”
In the final days of her first WNBA season, Taylor stands out amid a talented rookie class. She didn’t carry the blue-chip expectations of lottery picks such as Olivia Miles and Azzi Fudd. As an undrafted rookie who finished college in 2024, Taylor took a harder path — and a familiar one in the WNBA, in which rookie contracts are hard to get and even harder to hold on to.
The race for Rookie of the Year was won weeks ago. Miles broke Caitlin Clark’s rookie scoring record while averaging six assists — seventh in the league — for the Minnesota Lynx. She might be a unanimous selection.
But Taylor has earned a place in the conversation about the All-Rookie team. Entering Thursday night’s season finale at Washington, Taylor is averaging 13.6 points, having led the Sky backcourt in scoring for the second half of the season after Skyler Diggins was ruled out with a knee injury.
Amid an elite group of rookie guards — which also includes the Seattle Storm’s Flau’jae Johnson and the Toronto Tempo’s Kiki Rice — Taylor makes a strong impression.
“The numbers that she’s been putting up since she’s been in our starting lineup, it speaks for itself,” coach Tyler Marsh said. “She’s grown from being somebody that you have to worry about coming off the bench to now sitting at the top of people’s scouting reports. When a team is planning for Chicago, it starts with her and Kamilla (Cardoso).”
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For most of Sky training camp, Taylor was a problem.
She caught the team’s eye while playing in Lithuania and Poland, leagues that are drawing increased interest from WNBA scouts. It wasn’t just her scoring that caught the attention of Marsh and general manager Jeff Pagliocca — it was Taylor’s quality of movement.
Still, neither felt confident they had a roster spot to offer an undrafted shooting guard. After drafting another guard in Gabriela Jaquez and bringing in Diggins and DiJonai Carrington in free agency, the Sky backcourt was almost out of room.
But Taylor came to camp at UIC and forgot how to miss the basket. Day after day, she knocked down an increasingly absurd slate of shots during scrimmages. And Marsh and Pagliocca kept glancing at each other, simultaneously frustrated by the process of making cuts and elated that their biggest “let’s see” gamble of the offseason had paid off.
In the final week of the preseason, Pagliocca and Marsh decided to cut Hailey Van Lith and give Taylor her first shot at the WNBA. She has kept that shooting alive in her debut season, hitting 42.5% from the field and 32.9% behind the 3-point arc. She scored 18 points Tuesday as the Sky (16-27) snapped a five-game losing streak with a 97-85 victory over the Tempo in the home finale at Wintrust Arena.
Despite her shooting prowess, Taylor has been every part of a WNBA rookie. In the early weeks of the season, she struggled to consistently stay down on her defensive assignment, drifting off-ball out of an eagerness to pick off passes. Eventually she will need to hone her efficiency, creating gravity for herself without requiring quite so many touches.
Taylor knows all of this. When she played for UMass in college, coach Tory Verdi told her to keep her game vanilla — simple, clean, not too complicated. Taylor doesn’t want to tone down her style, but she has learned how to simplify her game
“I’m doing the little things,” she said. “I grew up with a lot of flash, so sometimes I struggle with that. I want to make the fancy play and the fun play. But I’ve just got to keep it simple, keep it vanilla, and the rest will come.”
Taylor’s success on its own isn’t enough to redeem this season for the Sky, who haven’t made the playoffs since 2023 and whose relevance slips further with each loss and each draft pick that fails to hit. The Sky aren’t just a piece or two from contention.
Still, Taylor offers a much-needed bright spot — both for her floundering team and for a front office that hasn’t found its footing.
Although she didn’t enter the league through the traditional draft process, Taylor is an exclusive-rights free agent because the 2026 season was her first in the WNBA. While she technically will become a free agent when her one-year contract expires, the Sky can retain her by simply extending a qualifying offer. They won’t have to match any potential offer sheets from other teams, meaning Taylor is guaranteed to return on an affordable contract in 2027.
Landing a talented guard on a low-cost contract is a significant win for the Sky, whose biggest expenditures this season — Azurá Stevens, Diggins and, to a lesser extent, Carrington — didn’t pay off because of injuries and underperformance.
This is also a return to the Sky’s roots. The team has a history of finding diamonds in the rough, particularly in European leagues, where a talented player can blossom after initially going undrafted. As the WNBA continues to expand, that will be crucial to competing in a widened player pool.
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And after yet another lost season, the Sky at least have a small glimmer of hope with the young core of Taylor, Cardoso and Rickea Jackson. The talent of that group — combined with its relatively inexpensive contracts, which totaled a little less than $1 million this season — gives the Sky an improved foundation to build upon next year.
It’s still not enough to compete for the playoffs. But the Sky must take their wins where they can get them — and Taylor is their biggest victory this season.