Angel Reese struggles to finish at the rim. Anyone who watches the WNBA knows this, and they know it's a problem for the Chicago Sky. Your starting power forward needs to shoot better than 31.3 percent in the restricted area, a number that ranks 43rd among 44 qualified players.
But the problems in Chicago run deeper than just Reese's finishing. There's more than one reason that the Sky are 0-4 on the season.
Reese improving her finishing would be great, but one of the bigger issues for Chicago is simply that the team lacks a go-to outside scorer. Good teams need players who can create from the wing and right now, Chicago doesn't have that player.
Chicago lacks a go-to scorer
The Sky thought they were solving their outside scoring issue this offseason when the team traded for Washington Mystics wing Ariel Atkins. It was a short-sighted, win-now trade that Chicago really didn't need to make, but in theory it gave the Sky an important piece that they needed to become playoff contenders.
In reality, though, Atkins has struggled. She's leading the team with 12.3 points per game, but is having the same issues finishing inside the arc that Reese has, with Atkins shooting 42.9 percent from 2-point range, including an 0-for-4 mark in the restricted area.
Atkins was supposed to be the player who lifted the Sky to the next level. Instead, the team has a minus-24.3 net rating with her on the floor and have been destroyed defensively in those minutes. She's made the Sky offense slightly better, but not at all to a point where it makes any kind of tangible difference.
You might be able to survive Atkins' failure to live up to expectations if someone else on the perimeter stepped up, but that hasn't been the case.
Courtney Vandersloot has clearly lost a step. She's shooting just 17.6 percent from 3-point range and currently has her worst assist-to-turnover ratio since 2012.
Kia Nurse has just been firing blanks from beyond the arc. She leads the team in 3-point attempts per game, but is shooting just 22.7 percent from deep.
Chicago's best wing players have come off the bench, with Rebecca Allen and Rachel Banham both shooting respectably. However, we have plenty of evidence to suggest that those two are nothing more than really solid role players. Maybe that means Chicago should start one of them over Nurse to raise the team's floor, but neither player is going to be able to play the role of a go-to scorer, especially in late-game situations.
There are plenty of questions about Reese and her frontcourt partner Kamilla Cardoso, but Chicago at least can see the upside in the duo. Reese is one of the league's best rebounders. Cardoso ranked eighth in the league in blocks per 40 minutes last year. Sure, the pairing creates spacing concerns, but both at least look like they have long-term upside.
The only backcourt player who looks like they can be a part of this team's future is Atkins, but it's becoming increasingly clear that Chicago needs her to be the secondary option beside a wing with elite upside.
Maybe Chicago will find a way to land JuJu Watkins in the draft next year. The team doesn't have control of its own first-round pick as the Lynx own the swap rights, but the team has swap rights with Connecticut, who look bound to also land in the lottery. Chicago also has the Mercury first-round pick, though that one looks far less likely to land in the No. 1 spot.
That Chicago doesn't control its own pick next year — and that it's No. 3 pick this season went to the Mystics in the Atkins deal, with Washington landing a player in Sonia Citron who this Mystics could really, really use — speaks to a larger issue in Chicago, which is that the front office seems stuck between trying to contend for a playoff spot and the reality that this team is still a ways off from that. It's led to moves that have made it tough for this team to land the kind of player it needs.
So, yeah. Angel Reese needs to finish better, but she's not Chicago's biggest issue. The state of the backcourt and the tough path forward to fix that issue is a far larger problem for the Sky.