Quick Three: Sun 86 Sky 82
Despite a valiant effort, Chicago fails to end another team's unbeaten season in the first home game of the Teresa Weatherspoon era.
The positive momentum of the Sky’s back-to-back victories over Dallas and New York was, in theory, killed by Saturday night’s loss against the Connecticut Sun, but the circumstances of the loss suggest that one defeat can’t stem the team’s current tide. The Sky provided a strong fight against a veteran Connecticut team that is already an eighth of the way through the season with a perfect record, a number of the Sky’s new faces performed well in their first home game, and the atmosphere the crowd at Wintrust Arena provided felt more akin to that of a playoff game than an early season clash. In short, the Sky, despite still having loads to improve on, have plenty to positively look back on from tonight as well. Let’s reflect on the most important takeaways from tonight which Chicago can carry into a three-game week which starts on Tuesday at home against Seattle.
1. Sky’s aggressive offense is too little, too late.
After a mixed (but mostly positive) offensive performance in the first half, the gears on the Sky offense ground to a halt during a third quarter the Sun were able to win 27-17—erasing an 8-point halftime deficit in the process. While 7 of the Sky’s 15 shots in the quarter were taken inside the paint, it still felt as if they struggled to establish a much-needed downhill mindset in what turned out to be a game-changing quarter for the opposition. If the Sky were generating great looks from outside the paint, the shot profile wouldn’t be as worrisome, but every shot they took outside the paint that didn’t come from Marina Mabrey was a spot up three—often with a lot of time left on the clock to find a better look. And the evidence bears that out as the rest of the roster was 0/4 outside the paint during the period (while Mabrey hit 3/5 shots). Even when the Sky did get into the paint, they struggled to score in the third—totaling just 2 points from the floor that did not come from either Mabrey or a transition lay-up. Part of that is Connecticut’s stellar defense, but the Sky also need to help themselves by finding better looks.
And to their credit, they quickly adapted in the fourth quarter and generated a lot better quality of looks—with a number of players aggressively putting the ball on the floor and forcing the Sun defense to make plays. Unfortunately, Chicago shot just 1/7 inside the paint in the final frame—despite a concerted effort (especially by Dana Evans) to generate higher shot quality. During that same period, the Sun also hit some ridiculously difficult shots despite good coverage. And while that contrast is inevitably frustrating in the short term, it’s something the Sky can live with. It’s often said that the NBA is “a make or miss league,” and the same applies to the W. If we’re thinking about process as opposed to result, the Sky can be satisfied with the looks they created in the final quarter and trust that more of them will fall if they continue to get downhill into the paint. The bigger question, then, is how the Sky can avoid another quarter like the third where things got stagnant and they struggled to score as a result. Of course, there’s many answers to that question, but the biggest change that I can see has to do with Dana Evans’ mentality.
As she transitions into her first season as a starter with a completely different set of responsibilities, Evans has arguably become too passive in the early stages of the season. When Evans turned on the pressure in the fourth, the effect for the Sky as a whole was similar to the one she had against the Liberty on Thursday. Again, the problem was that Evans and her teammates just couldn’t capitalize by making shots. If I had to guess, a few more film sessions with Weatherspoon and a longer feeling out process as a starter will clear the way for Evans to more effectively balance the need for her to take a backseat with the conflicting need for her to stay aggressive. When Evans attacks, the opposing defense has a very different challenge defending and the drives also lead to opportunities where she can create for others which, during stagnant offensive stretches, are of huge value—especially for Marina Mabrey.
2. Rebounding.
One word tells a huge story here. In my pregame content, I mentioned how the Sun’s counting stats on the glass were misleading because of their pace and, boy, did that turn out to be true tonight. When they missed, Connecticut gathered 16 rebounds to the Sky’s 12. Meanwhile, the Sun controlled their defensive glass with a 22-9 rebounding edge. The knock on effect of that completely dominant rebounding performance (38-21 total) was a huge edge in second chance points (27-7) that proved fatal for the Sky. Entering tonight’s game, the Sky were 11th in the W in defensive rebounding percentage which, if you’ll remember, is the exact same position they finished a season ago when the defensive glass was a huge area of weakness. After a performance where they grabbed just 43% of the defensive boards on offer, the Sky figure to slump to last in the league in that statistic, and it will be difficult to consistently win games as long as they remain in that position. Thus, this feels like priority 1A for the Sky to correct moving forward.
That said help is, theoretically, on the way. The size Kamilla Cardoso adds will, upon her debut, bring considerable impact, and the return of Isabelle Harrison (who was available tonight but did not play) should also help. Yet, the Sky can’t expect any one player to correct their struggles on the glass. At times, Chicago might be losing rebounding battles because of box outs or raw size, but a lot of the offensive boards Connecticut grabbed tonight came from plays where they simply out-hustled the Sky. It’s not shocking to be outworked by the league’s most physical and well-disciplined (AT’s WWE move aside) team, but the degree to which the Sky got beat to loose ball rebounds in this one was worrying. As an aside, it’s important to remember that Angel Reese spent much of this game guarding DeWanna Bonner on the perimeter. If Reese is in the paint to compete for boards and chase down the ones that become loose balls, the disparity likely isn’t so big. In any case, the Sky simply cannot allow a team to get five looks in a single possession like the Sun did at one point game late in the third quarter of a one-point game. Whatever you attribute those types of head scratching plays to, they’re difficult to overcome long term.
3. Marina Mabrey is an Offensive Hub for the Sky
For everything that went wrong on offense in the third quarter, it was Mabrey’s skill and shot-making which kept the Sky in the game before the changes made in the fourth got some other players going. And it wasn’t just the third quarter where Mabrey was the centerpiece of the Sky’s offense. In fact, with each passing game, it seems like Teresa Weatherspoon is better understanding how many ways there are to use Mabrey. Tonight, the Sun sent blitz after blitz at the Sky guards in the first half and, while others had mixed results splitting them, Mabrey was consistently breaking through the Sun doubles and finding the 4 on 3 advantage for her teammates behind. She was also decisive with her post-up opportunities once again, and the obvious physical advantage she creates by hunting smaller guards like Tyasha Harris is maybe the single most dependable source of offense for the Sky to this point in the season.
Off the ball, I’m impressed by how much work Weatherspoon is doing to help find her star player quality looks—with several plays throughout the course of the game featuring a sequence of screens designed to get her a clean look that doesn’t require her to use her patented step-back. Even when plays break down and fail to end up with the high-quality look that she’s after, Mabrey is doing a good job of finding others in positions where they can be successful. Given the high-volume role she’s clearly going to need to have for the Sky to win, I don’t think you can expect the efficiency to be stellar every single game. That said, her efficiency tonight was good (8/18 FG, 4/7 3PT), and her season splits (42/36/79) are slowly but surely working their way towards her solid but likely surpassable numbers from a year ago (41/39/84). Tonight was, in comparison to other games, a less noteworthy defensive performance, but her floor on defense seems to have risen considerably from a season ago—with an “average” performance like this being more than sufficient for a dominant offensive player who’s clearly in elite shape (35.5 minutes per game—12th most in the W) to start the season.