September 1, 2026
September 1, 2026
Chicago Sky’s 2025 Season: A Foundation Built Through Struggle
Chicago Sky’s 2025 season promised a fresh identity. First-year head coach Tyler Marsh inherited a roster in transition, and by October the transformation was real, just not the kind the franchise wanted reflected in the standings. The Sky finished 10-34, sixth in the Eastern Conference and 12th overall. They missed the postseason by a wide margin. Buried inside that record, though, was a season that reshaped the roster and tested the front office. It also handed the next era of Sky basketball a cornerstone who kept setting records as her team lost.
Everything changed the moment Marsh took over on November 3, 2024. Chicago was coming off a 13-27 finish that had already cost the previous coaching staff its job, and the front office wanted more than incremental progress. Expectations centered on Reese and Cardoso taking a leap in their second seasons, with a retooled supporting cast meant to turn close losses into real wins. The front office spent that winter chasing proven veterans and unproven potential at the same time, and the result was a roster caught between two timelines. It was still finding its footing when the games started to count.
Courtney Vandersloot came home on a one-year deal signed February 1, bringing a decade of point-guard savvy back to the franchise she once defined. Kia Nurse arrived days later. Michaela Onyenwere re-signed to keep continuity in the wing rotation. The boldest swing landed on February 23, when Chicago traded the No. 3 overall pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft to the Washington Mystics for two-time All-Star Ariel Atkins. That move sent a clear message: the front office wanted immediate scoring punch, not another lottery gamble.
The Sky still added talent through the draft despite losing that third pick. Guard Hailey Van Lith went at No. 11, and forward Maddy Westbeld followed at No. 16. Both signed rookie contracts and joined a frontcourt already anchored by returning sophomores. International prospects Ajša Sivka and Aicha Coulibaly had their rights retained for later seasons. Neither was expected to play immediately. It was a quiet hedge on depth down the road, nothing more. None of it carried the buzz of the previous year’s draft class, but it filled real gaps around a young core that still needed shooting and size.
The losses piled up, but Angel Reese refused to let them define her season. She played with an urgency that turned a lost year into a personal showcase, and the league noticed even when the standings did not.
The defining moment came on June 25 against the Los Angeles Sparks. Reese exploded for 18 points, 17 rebounds, and 6 assists in a 97-86 win that snapped a three-game skid. That stat line made her the fastest player in WNBA history to reach 150 rebounds and 50 assists in a single season. The milestone spoke to her relentlessness on the glass and her growing feel as a passer out of double-teams. Chicago Sky’s 2025 season had no shortage of individual brilliance, and that night in Los Angeles was its clearest proof.
Reese backed up the numbers with recognition. She earned Eastern Conference Player of the Week honors on July 1. She was then named a WNBA All-Star reserve for the second straight year. That marked a rare feat this early in a career. She closed the year as the league’s Peak Performer for rebounding on September 12, finishing at 14.7 points and 12.6 rebounds per game. Kamilla Cardoso complemented her inside, averaging 13.6 points and 8.5 rebounds. Together they gave Chicago one of the more physical frontcourt pairings in the league, even as wins stayed scarce.
Injuries and controversy stripped away whatever stability the roster had built over the winter. Neither problem eased as summer wore on. Vandersloot’s comeback lasted only seven games before she tore her ACL against the Indiana Fever on June 7. Her season ended there, and so did the young roster’s only source of experienced floor leadership. The loss rippled through the rotation for months. Marsh had to lean harder on unproven ball handlers in a league that punishes inexperience at the point.
The season opener against Indiana brought its own storm. The WNBA opened an investigation on May 17 into allegations of inappropriate fan conduct directed at Chicago’s players. Marsh said the team had neither witnessed nor reported any misconduct itself. Nine days later, the league concluded the allegations were unsubstantiated, closing a distracting chapter that had briefly overshadowed the basketball. Between the injury and the noise, Chicago Sky’s 2025 season never found the sustained rhythm a young team needed to compete.
Cardoso’s growth mattered as much as any transaction the front office made that winter. Her chemistry with Reese inside gave Chicago a real rebounding edge most nights. Perimeter shooting and bench depth betrayed the Sky too often late in games, though, and that imbalance defined long stretches of the schedule.
Atkins justified the price of admission. She led the team in scoring at 13.1 points per game and supplied the kind of veteran shot-making the roster had lacked a year earlier. She rarely got enough help from a backcourt still adjusting to life without Vandersloot. Too many close games slipped away in the fourth quarter as a result. Wintrust Arena still drew an average of 9,073 fans a night, proof the fan base kept showing up even as the record sagged.
A 10-34 finish stings no matter how it happened, and this one happened for reasons that went beyond talent alone. Chicago sat 24 games behind the final playoff spot when the regular season closed. That gap made one thing clear: this rebuild was still in its early innings, not its final stretch. It also marked a step backward from the 13-27 mark the franchise posted in 2024, a hard number for a fan base that had been promised progress. The distance mattered more than any single loss, because it framed everything else that happened that summer.
What the season proved, more than any number in the standings, was that Chicago already had its cornerstone. Reese’s record-setting pace and repeat All-Star selection gave the franchise something to build around, even while injuries and roster churn kept the win column nearly empty. Cardoso’s growth alongside her suggested the frontcourt piece was already in place. Shooting, depth, and health remained the puzzle still to solve. Chicago’s own recap of Reese’s year framed her as the engine of everything that went right, and that framing held up under scrutiny. Chicago’s fan base had watched a championship core dissolve in recent years. Chicago Sky’s 2025 season offered something scarcer than wins. It gave the fanbase a clear identity to build the next contender around, even before the record caught up.
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