To understand the Sky’s offensive struggles, one must start by appreciating what it takes to be a top-tier offense in the WNBA.
You have to have an elite scorer — A’ja Wilson, Paige Bueckers, Kelsey Plum — who can take it upon herself to drop 20 points per game.
Or you have to have multiple shooters consistently making better than 35% of their three-pointers at significant volume.
The top offenses in the league — the Wings, Lynx, Valkyries, Tempo and Aces — have at least one of the two.
The Sky have neither.
Nobody on the team is scoring more than 15 points per game, and the only player shooting 35% or better from three is rookie Gabriela Jaquez — and that’s on limited volume.
Now, what they do have is an elite point guard in Skylar Diggins, who hasn’t averaged less than 15 points in any of her last 10 seasons; two frontcourt players who can score in Azura Stevens and Kamilla Cardoso; and solid shooters in Jaquez, Stevens, Jacy Sheldon and Rachel Banham.
So while the limits of their roster might keep them out of the top tier, there’s no excuse for the offense ranking 13th out of 15 teams, which is where it sits today.
Coach Tyler Marsh has taken the blame publicly, saying he needs to be better. Still, it’s not clear what that actually means. Should he change the offense? Change rotations? Use his best players differently?
Marsh said Tuesday that while he and his staff are discussing big changes to the offense internally, for now they’re mostly tweaking points of emphasis and fixing execution.
Cardoso agreed that execution has been the problem.
‘‘We need to do a better job as players [of] executing, doing the little details,’’ Cardoso told the Sun-Times. ‘‘We have amazing plays, and sometimes we’ve gotta set a screen and we don’t hit a body. Sometimes we’ve gotta execute a little better and be more poised.’’
Note the direction each is pointing: Marsh says the staff has to be better, and Cardoso says the players do. Both sides taking accountability is good news. The bad news is that the on-court connection has been inconsistent.
After the Sky lost for the sixth time in seven games Sunday in Toronto, Diggins said she expects more maturity, leadership and effort from everyone — players and staff. She clarified Tuesday that she included herself in that and that she and Marsh are on the same page.
‘‘If we had a problem, I’d just come out and say it,’’ Diggins said.
She said her message was well-received despite the short turnaround. And the Sky played their best basketball in weeks, nearly toppling the Dream.
‘‘It was a call to action for us,’’ guard Natasha Cloud said of Diggins’ words. ‘‘There’s an expectation and standard that she expects to be on the floor, and that lit a fire under our ass.’’
Diggins, who scored 17 points on 5-for-15 shooting against the Dream, acknowledged she still is working out how she wants to be used to best complement her teammates, especially after the season-ending torn ACL suffered by Rickea Jackson changed the Sky’s trajectory.
‘‘I think what we imagined changed so much,’’ Diggins said. ‘‘We just had so much change, so I think a lot of our visioning is pivoting, rediscovering what that is. That’s what we’re in the process of doing. Maybe not how I imagined, but we don’t even have the personnel that I imagined.’’
That’s the unlucky part. The Sky entered the season with an elite scorer in Jackson, but she went down in the fourth game. And they didn’t have a backup because that’s what defines a team’s best player: She can’t be replaced.
When a team underachieves, like the Sky have, the question is always: Is it the roster, the coaching or bad luck? With the Sky, it’s all three. But Marsh knows the pressure is on him to turn things around.
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