Quick Three: Mercury 86 Sky 68
Chicago falls to Phoenix for the second time in four nights as offense grinds to a halt with new look perimeter personnel.
There were moments in tonight’s game where it looked like the Sky had learned some very valuable lessons from Thursday’s demoralizing home defeat against this same Phoenix team. Unfortunately for Teresa Weatherspoon and her team, those moments didn’t last long enough to ever put the visitors in with a serious chance of winning the game as they fell to a season record of 11-16 and within perilous reach of the 9th-placed Atlanta Dream. The return of Chennedy Carter who, unlike on Saturday in Los Angeles, seemed to have fully shaken her bout with illness was a welcome relief, but the Sky will need more from those around her if they want to get back to winning ways when they return to action next weekend against Marina Mabrey and the Sun. Before then, let’s dive into what went wrong in tonight’s game plus look ahead to Tuesday’s trade deadline.
1. Mercury offense shows greater purpose and versatility.
With their veteran core and championship or bust approach to last offseason, it should come as no great surprise that the Phoenix Mercury look more ready to compete in the WNBA playoffs than this young Sky team. Even then, the gap between the two teams in that department has been pretty apparent in their two meetings over the last 96 hours. There’s a lot of little things that Nate Tibbetts and company deserve credit for doing well, but the difference which was most apparent between the two teams was in the purpose of their offensive actions. While the Sky have a tendency to become rudimentary and routinely work the ball towards a single shot opportunity, the Mercury offense consistently felt more dynamic—with optionality available to Natasha Cloud or whoever else was at the controls of the particular play. Whether Phoenix’s set starts with a post player receiving a feed from the outside or with a perimeter player putting the ball on the deck and attacking the paint, there’s always a feeling that there’s something more to come. If Kahleah Copper is met with a harsh defensive front, Sophie Cunningham will be waiting in the corner for a kick out. If Brittney Griner is stood up on the way to the basket, Diana Taurasi will slash across the court to receive a pass and take a mid-range shot. Crucially, the players with the ball in hand are always looking for those types of unloads. Coaches are usually quick to praise “competitive” turnovers, and the Mercury made a number of those tonight. But, because they had eyes up and were aggressively looking for teammates in better positions, a lot of those competitive efforts also resulted in high-quality looks for teammates and assists (21 on 28 FGM).
To the contrary, the Sky’s offense often looks a lot more “A to B.” Once the entry pass is made into the post, the end result is—more often than not—the big taking the shot attempt. When the ball goes on the deck, the ball handler usually ends up being the one to take the shot that closes the possession. Thanks to their prowess on the offensive glass, Chicago sometimes still gets a secondary look from that same offensive possession, but it’s not by virtue of their offense being dynamic and squeezing the best shot out of each and every possession. There are, of course, exceptions to this. After yesterday’s win in LA, I highlighted how well Kamilla Cardoso and Lindsay Allen had manipulated the Sparks defense, and there were still moments in tonight’s game where both pulled the strings. Yet, it just didn’t happen often enough for the Sky to create the type of offensive threat needed to sustain a 90-point pace against such a strong defensive team. At the same time, the Sky’s personnel is not doing them many favors when it comes to having a more dynamic offensive unit. For all the praise thrown at Rachel Banham yesterday, she’s simply not the type of on-ball offensive player that Marina Mabrey was. With the ball in Mabrey’s hands, there was a lot of isolation looks, but there was also a lot of opportunity for others to get space to shoot or drive after a pass. When Banham gets the ball, she’s almost always going to take a spot-up shot or pass the ball without dribbling. Because the defense doesn’t have to react to any on-ball movement, exceptional off-ball movement is needed to create openings and better looks.
2. Lack of “hustle points” limits offensive ceiling.
While the Sky may be missing Mabrey in a number of ways, it’s no secret that their offense lacked shooting even with the former Notre Dame guard in the line-up. Yet, the Sky were still able to generate respectable offensive production and a solid win-loss record in the first half of the season thanks in part to their ability to score from “hustle” categories like second-chance scoring, fast-break scoring and points off of turnovers. In both losses this week, the Sky struggled mightily to replicate their first half successes in those departments. They managed just 12 total fast-break points across the two games compared to their season average of 11.9 PPG and tallied just 6 points off of 12 Phoenix turnovers tonight.
Even on the offensive glass, Chicago were typically strong (34.4% ORB - nearly 5% better than their season average), but they weren’t efficient enough with the second-chance scoring looks created. On Thursday, the Sky outscored Phoenix 8-5 in second-chance points but did so on just 25% (3/12 FG) shooting. In tonight’s game, the Sky were much improved at 41% (7/17 FG) but still couldn’t match the ruthless efficiency of the Mercury (6/8 FG) who turned nearly all of their looks into key scores. And while the fast break scoring and points from turnovers can sometimes be more dependent on the other team’s performance (Phoenix, for instance, committed a lot of dead-ball turnovers tonight which don’t generate easy points), the Sky will have to be more efficient with their second-chance looks for the remainder of the season—especially given these “hustle” scoring stats are so key to their overall offensive production (49.4% of all Chicago points in 2024 come from these three categories).
3. Deadline moves on the way?
If I had to hazard a guess, the Sky will stay put during Tuesday’s WNBA trade deadline but should they? There’s been no secret from day one that a big goal for Teresa Weatherspoon is to compete in the WNBA playoffs this season. If that’s still the intent for all involved, this roster clearly needs some help to get there. Washington may be too young and Dallas may be too far under water to claw their way back in the top eight, but the Dream made a huge statement of intent with their win over the Sun earlier on Sunday. And while I diagnosed a lot of the issues with the Sky offense above, the simplest way to categorize their struggles is that the personnel left behind after the Marina Mabrey trade simply does not leave this team with enough shooting. Bigs Cardoso, Angel Reese and Isabelle Harrison did an admirable job of knocking down mid-range shots in today’s game, but the fact that Chennedy Carter was the only other teammate who hit a shot outside of the paint underlines what this team is lacking. The Sky have taken 48 fewer threes than the next closest team in the W (despite playing two more games) and are down to 11th in the W in three-point percentage (30.2%) after tonight’s 0/14 effort.
No matter how you slice or dice it, this team is severely limited when it comes to scoring the basketball outside the paint. With Banham, a less multi-dimensional player, as the team’s primary shooting threat, the struggle to create spacing has only become greater, and the efficiency of Reese and Carter—the Sky’s highest volume shooters inside—is likely to further suffer as defenses collapse deeper and deeper into the paint. The question, then, becomes (1) what practical moves the Sky could make to improve this situation and (2) if they’d be willing to give up what it takes to do so. Both questions are equally difficult to answer. If the Sky wanted to add a shooter from someone else’s roster, they’d be more worried about #2—the price point. Because while the front office has been very clear about wanting to compete this season, they’ve made very few moves so far that back those plans up. Trading Mabrey, regardless of all that went into the deal, didn’t speak to the team’s desire to be competitive in ‘24, and the package they received in return made it very difficult to keep competing. If the Sky are willing to package some of the assets they’ve piled up in a deal with a contract like Brianna Turner or Moriah Jefferson’s, there could be a slim path to do a deal, but it’s hard to see what team would be offering the shooter the Sky need to turn a corner offensively. No one above Chicago in the standings (nor the Dream just behind) will want to aid a play-off rival, and the cost to acquire one of the top shooters on a team below (like the Sparks’ Kia Nurse for instance) would likely be too exorbitant to make sense for a team whose ceiling is likely a first-round exit either way. With so little avenues to reasonably buy what they need and Atlanta lurking just behind, Jeff Pagliocca should think carefully about selling assets at the deadline should another team inquire about one of the Sky’s players.