NEW YORK — The dream is officially, mathematically dead.
Eliminated from playoff contention Wednesday, the Sky fell well short of their goal. A roster built to “win-now” has produced only nine victories.
Injuries were part of the story. The Sky went long stretches without their three best players, making it tough to sustain momentum. Point guard Courtney Vandersloot played only seven games, Ariel Atkins missed seven and Angel Reese sat out 10.
Asked whether this season still built toward something, Reese — now the face of the franchise — didn’t sugarcoat it.
“Honestly, it’s hard to say,” she said. “Because you don’t get the results that you want.”
Still, she pointed to the team’s best assets: its young pillars.
“Your team gets better as your young players get better,” Reese said. “Me and –Kamilla [Cardoso] have gotten better throughout the year.”
That might matter more than the playoffs. Even at full strength, a deep postseason run was unlikely. For a team still in the building phase, development is the priority.
Which does raise the question of why the team traded away the No. 3 pick in the draft during this phase. And, more broadly, how a “win-now” roster has ended up with only nine wins.
Before the game Thursday against the Liberty, coach Tyler Marsh wasn’t in the mood to look backward.
“It’s revisionist history to see what you could have done differently,” Marsh said. “There’s always things, whether it’s from an execution standpoint or game kind of things, but off-the-court stuff you can never really control.”
For now, his focus is on the immediate finish.
“For us, it’s less about what this season has been and more about what we can do to finish on a high note,” Marsh said. “That’s where everyone’s mindset is — to still get to a point where we’re playing good basketball.”
Playing within limits
Coming back from a three-week absence, Reese remains on a minutes restriction. She played 26 minutes in her first game back and 29 minutes against the Liberty.
Still, she didn’t look like she had missed much time. Credit, she said, went to the conditioning work put together by the Sky’s strength coach.
“I was in the gym the entire time I was out,” she said.
Atkins, meanwhile, is now off her minutes restriction after returning from a calf injury.
“It hurts,” she said of her body adjusting back to game speed. “But in the same sentence, it’s really nice to be back out there with the team.”
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