Bold Predictions for the Sky's Second Half
A big playoff run, a crash back to Earth or something in between? Looking into the crystal ball to project Chicago's second half.
They say “once bitten, twice shy,” but I have been bitten several times by bold predictions about the 2024 Sky and am still coming back for more. In case you missed the previous predictions, let’s see how they turned out:
Dana Evans signs an extension before the 2024 season. (She didn’t.)
Kahleah Copper makes all-WNBA. (She might but not in Chicago.)
Sika Koné wins MIP. (She won’t and is no longer with the team.)
The Sky make the WNBA playoffs in 2024. (More on this later.)
Mabrey & Maxwell are top 10 in 3PT%. (Mabrey traded + 26th. Maxwell cut.)
Mabrey leads the Sky in assists. (True while she was on the team…)
Michaela Onyenwere will lead the Sky in net-rating. (9th of 12 on the team.)
Chicago takes on a bad salary to get draft capital. (Still possible but unlikely.)
The Sky have a top-six defense. (6th in defensive rating…phew.)
In short, not great. But there’s no reason to stop now (especially with no more Sky basketball for another week), let’s dive into my latest batch.
1. Chennedy Carter gets MVP votes.
This is a take I’ve been working on for some time (I have the Twitter draft to prove it) but haven’t fully formulated until now. On paper, Carter should be one of the names mentioned for MVP — right? She doesn’t deserve A’ja Wilson buzz nor is she playing as well as Napheesa Collier, Jonquel Jones or Breanna Stewart, but the list gets pretty short after that. No matter who else you might place above her, she’s not going to win the award, but I imagine she’ll still end up on a couple of ballots. For one, many voters still think about value a lot when they vote for this award. “MVP” means different things to different people, but it’s hard to argue with Carter as a candidate for the voters who are thinking about it in the terms of which player is truly most valuable to their team winning and losing games. In that context, Carter might be even more valuable for her team than a Jones or Stewart (or Magbegor and Loyd, etc.) simply because no one else on the Sky can support the offense in the same way. The sample size is still unfolding, but Chicago is a .500 team with her in the starting 5 and a .333 team when she came off the bench. There’s more to that (Allen starting, the rookies gaining confidence, etc.) but Carter is a big part of it. The Sky’s success rate in the clutch has also improved drastically since Carter became the team’s primary closer. So long as this team is built on a defense-first identity, close games are inevitable and closing them out more regularly is of the utmost importance.
2. Lindsay Allen is one of the W’s top assisters post-break.
This is less prediction more necessity for Chicago after the Marina Mabrey trade. Rachel Banham is not an unwilling passer (3.9 assists per 36 minutes in her career), but she’s unlikely to take on a high-usage role like Mabrey did—meaning the chances to create simply won’t be there. Moriah Jefferson, on the other hand, is a primary ball handler and averaged almost 5 assists per game as recently as 2022, but her health and role in the offense are still up in the air. Of the existing group, Dana Evans can be a team’s orchestrator but has not found that groove in 2024 (nor will her current role likely allow her to find it). Carter can, and almost certainly will need to, up her assist figures with Mabrey gone, but the team also needs her to remain a dominant scorer—with passing relegated to a secondary responsibility. Allen, on the other hand, is second on the team in assists with 80 behind Mabrey (109) and has consistently been the stabilizing force of the team’s offense—even if that hasn’t always translated to high-assist numbers. With the unique shot-creation skills that Mabrey brings gone, the Sky will be even more reliant on running a functional offense in order to score and Allen, as the person who provides the most fluidity, will likely see her numbers tick up as a result.
3. Pagliocca stays put at the trade deadline.
I think the Sky probably should make more moves before the deadline, but I don’t think they’re going to. The obvious moves would be dealing Brianna Turner to a contender or offloading Dana Evans to a team that wants to invest in her future, but both deals are difficult to complete for different reasons. In the Turner case, her $150,000 salary makes her difficult for most teams to absorb—though pretty much any contender could do with a bench defender of her quality. If the Sky did do a deal involving Turner, they would need to take a similarly sized salary back in the trade, and there’s few teams that will see Turner as such a high priority that they offload a near-max player to get her. For Evans, the trouble is finding the right scenario for her to be successful. There’s few (if any) teams that are going to plug her in as a starter mid-season, and a trade into a different bench role does little for Evans’ career unless it’s with a team like New York or Las Vegas where she could win another ring. Odds are she stays patient and has her pick of the league next winter. Once those two are out of the equation, there’s little left for the Sky to do. If the Sky wanted to implode their roster and bottom out to surround Carter, Kamilla Cardoso and Angel Reese with talent out of the draft, they could move someone like Isabelle Harrison (who contenders likely would be more willing to move pieces around for), but I don’t see them wanting to move in that direction given they currently hold a playoff position. Of course, they also can’t fully move in that direction anyways as they’re reliant on Dallas to finish below them in the standings to keep their own pick.
4. Michaela Onyenwere plays her way into a big contract.
Onyenwere, as previously discussed, seems to be the player most likely to profit from the departure of Mabrey with an enhanced role in the Sky’s rotation. Her play for the majority of the season has seemingly justified more time on court, and her performances just before the Olympic break looked impossible to ignore. Given the Sky now have a gap in their line-up in the exact position she’s best fit to play, the expectation has to be that Onyewnere continues to see increase time, and there’s no indication from her play (in Chicago or overseas last winter) that she’ll struggle with the additional time. At her worst, Onyenwere is a defender who brings high-energy, has the traits needed to defend at least 2-4 and can knock down the occasional three. At her best, she’s a multi-level scorer who’s capable of being a team’s third (or maybe even second) offensive option while guarding the opponent’s best player. She’ll need to prove that she can do that consistently at the WNBA level (she did it for Ormanspor in Turkey last winter), and the sample size in this second half won’t be big enough to earn her a max contract or anything close. But with an enhanced role and a continuation of everything she’s shown in the minutes afforded to her, at least one team will commit money to her as a two-way option when she hits free agency. As she’s a restricted free agent, the Sky will have the option to match and, so long as she plays to the level she has so far in 2024 in that bigger role, it would be surprising to see Chicago do anything but match.
5. The Sky sneak into the WNBA playoffs.
The Dream and Wings have been considerably impacted by injury and are likely to come hard in the second half of the season, but I think the Sky have the buffer needed to survive in the eighth seed if the departure of Mabrey doesn’t impact their success too much. The Sky were .500 in the last ten games before the pause for the Olympics and continuing at that pace would make it very challenging for the Dream (3 games back) and Wings (4.5) to close the gap. However, with some expected drop-off as a result of the trade, a finish like 6-10 in the Sky’s final 16 games of the regular season might be more practical. That would leave Atlanta in a position where they need to go 9-7 in their final 16 while the Wings would need a 10-5 finish to reach the same record of 16-24. As it stands, the Sky are in pole position to claim the tiebreaker over both (2-1 series lead against each), but late season meetings with the Wings (9/8, Game 35) and Dream (9/17, Game 39) could still tip the scales further. With two games left against both the Mystics and the Sparks, the Sky should feel confident about picking up at least a few wins on their run-in, but both the Dream (2 v. WAS, 1 vs. LA) and Wings (1 vs. each) have similar match-ups remaining. In the end, the Sky’s performance will be most important for holding on to the final spot. Anything better than 6-10 should keep Atlanta and Dallas behind, and this team has obviously shown the capability to win 7 of these 16 games. However, “this team” is a misnomer as the Sky’s offense will look very different when games resume on August 15th.
