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When the news of Teresa Weatherspoon’s firing reverberated through the WNBA’s spheres, it seemed like the Chicago Sky had just taken a step back. Why fire the head coach who seemed to get the most out of rookie forward Angel Reese, and out of an offense run by guard Chennedy Carter? The team barely missed the postseason due to injuries piling up by the end of the 2024 regular season, so surely Weatherspoon’s leadership could have lasted another season with the Sky.
However, Chicago managed to rebound from that perceived misstep. They hired Las Vegas Aces assistant coach Tyler Marsh to lead a new, “egoless” brand of Sky basketball. They took a swing to get back former Sky guard Courtney Vandersloot, who just won another championship – this time, though, with the New York Liberty. They also utilized their draft capital to take on players who have legitimate shots at becoming rotation players for this team. We’ll get a glimpse at this plan beginning May 17, when the Sky face off with the Indiana Fever for their 2025 season opener. For now, we can at least look at the moves they made this offseason, and project how successful they’ll be as a result.
Key Chicago Sky players OUT in 2025
Player name
2025 status
Dana Evans
Signed with Las Vegas Aces
Chennedy Carter
Unsigned free agent
Isabelle Harrison
Signed with New York Liberty
Diamond DeShields
Signed with Connecticut Sun
Brianna Turner
Signed with Indiana Fever
Lindsey Allen
Traded to Chicago Sky
Evans, Carter, and DeShields departing are significant to their guard depth. Evans had expressed displeasure with her role in 2024, as she was deployed as a shooting guard off the bench instead of as a starting point guard in Weatherspoon’s rotation. Now, she’ll be able to carve a more specific role while with the Aces, although she will be behind Chelsea Gray in the depth chart.
DeShields will be a likely starter with the rebuilding Sun in 2025, while Carter didn’t end up landing with a WNBA team after a great 2024 campaign.
Losing valuable forward depth in Harrison and Turner is also a blow, although the team still has Michaela Onyenwere, Kaela Davis, Rebecca Allen, Morgan Bertsch, and Elizabeth Williams available for veteran depth at the position during training camp. And, of course, the team still has 2024 All-Rookie team member Angel Reese anchoring the position.
Key Chicago Sky players IN for 2025
Player name
Experience
Courtney Vandersloot (free agency)
15th season
Ariel Atkins (trade)
8th season
Rebecca Allen (trade)
11th season
Kia Nurse (free agency)
8th season
This isn’t an extensive list of each player on the roster heading into training camp and who’s not, but more so who will be truly impactful for the team this year.
Vandersloot, all too familiar with the Chicago organization, re-joins the team as a likely starter given the departure of Evans, DeShields, and Carter this offseason. Atkins will likely also compete for a starting role as she’s an experienced guard coming off a successful Unrivaled season which showed off her strengths as a midrange shooter and post scorer.
Allen is another return player, coming back via trade from the Connecticut Sun this offseason. Allen missed a ton of time while with the Phoenix Mercury in 2024, so hopefully she can have a bounceback season in familiar territory. Her three-point shooting is sorely needed by Chicago, which we’ll get into later.
Another key shooting addition was Nurse in free agency. The former Los Angeles Sparks guard shot just 33.1 percent from deep with the Sparks last season but has shown the ability to lace it in past years with the New York Liberty and Phoenix Mercury.
Chicago Sky draft class
10th overall pick: F Ajša Sivka (Slovenia)11th overall pick: G Hailey Van Lith (TCU)16th overall pick: F Maddy Westbeld (Notre Dame)22nd overall pick: G Aicha Coulibaly (Texas A&M / Mali)The Sky drafted well this year, especially with their addition of Sivka to their roster and with the more obvious selection of Van Lith with their 11th overall pick. Sivka has shown flashes of being a high-ceiling stretch big, and she’s excellent at knowing how to use her size to her advantage in box-out situations to eat up rebounds. As for Van Lith, the hope here is that she adds great depth behind Vandersloot in the Sky’s rotation and that she’s able to lead their bench unit as well as she did as a leader for TCU’s starting lineup.
Westbeld and Coulibaly would add much-needed youth and depth to their bench, but they feel like they might be on the outside looking in given the teams’ other movements in the offseason.
Strengths and weaknesses for Chicago
The biggest strength for Chicago is going to be their rebounding. When you roster Reese, Kamilla Cardoso, and Elizabeth Williams, you are bound to lead the league in rebounds per game. That’s going to be key to getting as many looks on offense as possible for this new roster and rotation.
Another strength we can immediately see for the Sky is just how balanced this team feels between veterans and younger players. You have Reese and Cardoso, and you have Williams. You have Van Lith, and then you have Vandersloot, Atkins, and Nurse. There’s a truly symbiotic relationship forming on paper for this team, and that feels by design. If egos don’t clash, a wonderful student-teacher dynamic is bound to form throughout the season.
A huge weakness that the Sky are probably hoping to have addressed by adding Allen, Nurse, Van Lith, and Sivka to their roster is their three-point shooting. In 2024, they only shot 32.3 percent from three-point range and only attempted 14.9 per game. The attempts are the real number to sneer at, considering the next-lowest number per game came from the Connecticut Sun with 18 per game.
Adding veterans willing to shoot will open up a world of possibilities for Chicago’s talented bigs. Spacing is key to a team’s success on offense, and the Sky knew that heading into the offseason.
Way-too-early predictions
Last year, they went from obvious tank candidates to sudden postseason contenders to, ultimately, falling somewhere in the middle of that. There are a ton of new players in Chicago this season, and with next season being a bit of a question mark in terms of how many players the Sky are willing to spend to keep, this year might be more of a feel-out period for them than last year was.
Chicago will be, once again, a fringe-postseason team, and they’ll actually make the playoffs as the 7 seed.
