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You can find previous installments in the WNBA season preview series here: New York Liberty, Minnesota Lynx, Connecticut Sun, Las Vegas Aces, Seattle Storm, Indiana Fever, Phoenix Mercury, Atlanta Dream, Washington Mystics
Chicago finished 13-27 last season under Hall of Fame player Teresa Weatherspoon, who was fired after just one season at the helm. The Sky were in the thick of the race for the final playoff berth last season before Angel Reese’s season was cut short in early September and fell just short of the postseason for the first time since 2018.
The Sky’s 13 wins last season were their fewest in a non-Wubble season since going 13-21 in 2018. Their .325 winning percentage in 2024 was the franchise’s worst since going 5-29 (.147) in its inaugural season in 2006. The Sky went 16-16 in the regular season before making a run to the 2021 WNBA title, then went 26-10 in 2022 en route to a loss in the semifinals. Chicago is 18 games under .500 (31-49) in two seasons since then.
The Sky replaced Weatherspoon with Tyler Marsh, a first-time head coach with only three years of WNBA experience in his 13-year coaching career. Marsh spent the last three seasons as an assistant with the Las Vegas Aces, winning WNBA titles in 2022 and 2023, before which he was an assistant with the NBA’s Indiana Pacers and player development coach for the NBA’s Toronto Raptors. Marsh’s basketball journey has taken him all over North America, from his hometown of Miami to Maine for prep school, to Birmingham, AL for college, then to Edinburg, TX; Des Moines, IA; Bakersfield, CA; and Fort Wayne, IN while coaching in the NBA G-League. After that, he had a brief stint in Normal, AL as an assistant at Alabama A&M, then off to Toronto, back to Indianapolis, his stint in Vegas, and now finally Chicago.
The Sky’s pair of ascendant second-year stars are part of a wave of young star talent hitting Chicago at the same time. Reese and Cardoso don’t come with quite the same level of astronomical hype as a couple of the others, but if even half of them fulfill their promise, Chicago sports fans should have some exciting years ahead.
The title of most-hyped young star in Chicago’s is a toss-up between two recent No. 1 overall draft picks in the NFL, 23-year-old quarterback Caleb Williams, and the NHL, 19-year-old center Connor Bedard. Both were saddled with the “generational” prospect label long before being selected atop their respective drafts but haven’t reached those heights in the very early stages of their careers. Bedard won the Calder Cup as the NHL’s Rookie of the Year in 2023-24 but didn’t show much improvement in his recently-completed second season. Williams had his moments as a rookie but endured a 5-12 season that got his head coach fired two-thirds of the way through. MLB’s Cubs’ 23-year-old star Pete Crow Armstrong wasn’t quite as heralded, and baseball prospects go through a very different process to reach the MLB stage, but he was the top prospect in the Cubs’ system and one of the top 15 in all of baseball when he reached the big leagues.
The Sky finished 10th in offensive rating in 2024, but only their dominance on the offensive boards saved them from ranking in the bottom two.
The Sky ranked 11th in field-goal percentage (42.2%), 2-point percentage (44.9%) and effective field-goal percentage (45.7%) while finishing dead last in free-throw percentage (74.2%), 12th in points per scoring attempt (0.99), points per play (0.84), free throw rate (12.4%), assist rate (63.9%) and foul rate (21.3%). Chicago led the league with 10.9 offensive rebounds per game and finished second in offensive rebounding rate, bringing in 29.5% of its misses. But that only goes so far when you’re missing nearly 60% of your shots overall and 44.2% of them in the restricted area. Chicago was also 12th in restricted area FG% at 55.8% while leading the league in both makes and attempts in the restricted area/
