After going just 13-27 last season and missing the WNBA playoffs for the first time since 2018, the Chicago Sky enter 2025 in a weird spot. New head coach Tyler Marsh has a rag-tag group to work with, but there are some important pieces who should give the team a shot at the postseason.
Mostly, those pieces are up front, where the combination of Kamilla Cardoso and Angel Reese could have the team set for a long time at the four and five. The acquisition of Ariel Atkins this offseason is also huge for the Sky's playoff hopes, as she gives the team a go-to perimeter scoring option.
Here are three major questions for the Chicago Sky in 2025.
Can Angel Reese improve at the rim?
Angel Reese is probably the WNBA player that I'm the most split on when it comes to forecasting what her season — and the rest of her career — will look like.
She's an elite rebounder on both ends of the floor, someone who crashes the glass and creates additional possessions for her team, but part of why she does that is that she was really, really, really bad at finishing in 2024.
Reese led the WNBA in attempts in the restricted area, shooting from there 8.4 times per game. Good, right? You want players taking the easiest shots they can and nothing is easier — theoretically, at least — than a shot at the rim.
But Reese was, like, historically bad at making those shots, connecting on just 47.0% of them. That was last of all players to average four or more attempts per game in the restricted area.
Her Hoop Stats has shot tracking data that goes back to 2018. In that span, 163 players have attempted 100 or more shots in the restricted area in a season. Reese has the lowest field goal percentage of any of them. Only one other player — Tiffany Mitchell in 2018 — even made under 50 percent of her restricted area attempts.
The question here for Chicago is a simple one: Can Reese get to a point where she can just be average at the rim? No one's saying she needs to hit 70% of her rim attempts, but Chicago will only go so far if it's wasting possessions on missed Reese shots at the basket.
Is Hailey Van Lith the longterm answer at point guard?
The Sky have what should be its frontcourt of the future, but there are big questions about the backcourt. With so much of the league set to be free agents next year, the only real roster certainty for any team is that recent draft picks should still be under contract, so if Chicago happened to find a key piece of its future backcourt in the draft, that would be huge.
And Chicago maybe did that! It's still early, but in the preseason at least, Hailey Van Lith looked like a WNBA player.
Look at the team's final preseason game, for example. Van Lith was the first guard off the bench and went 3-for-4 from the floor, knocking down a pair of 3-pointers in the process. She added three assists as well.
Arguably the biggest question entering her senior season at TCU was if Van Lith could be a primary ball-handler and playmaker at the next level. She made major strides in that area with the Horned Frogs and it looks like that's paid off, though we won't know for sure until we see how she looks in regular season action.
How does this team find shooting?
The Sky were arguably the league's worst offense last year, ranking last in the league in points per scoring attempt and points per play. The closest thing to a strength was that the team finished ninth out of 12 teams in 3-point field goal percenage, but part of that might have been due to a lack of volume, as the team was last in 3-point rate.
Now with a new head coach in Chicago, the expectation should be that the team ups its reliance on 3-pointers. But if that's the case, who'll be taking those shots?
The additions of Atkins and Kia Nurse are part of that answer, as will be Rachel Banham taking on a larger role. She shot 38.2 percent from deep in 16 games with Chicago last year.
As for Atkins and Nurse, it will come down to efficiency. Atkins has shot the ball well at times during her WNBA career, but also has just two seasons where she shot over 36 percent from 3-point range. Nurse has been very inconsistent, shooting under 30 percent from deep twice. She made 33.1 percent of her deep looks in Los Angeles last season.