The Sky had a nice long film session to start practice Monday.
Coming off two straight losses, coach Tyler Marsh had plenty of material to work with.
Like all those missed shots from their home stand.
The Sky (3-3) are struggling to shoot — 41.6% from the field and 27.1% from 3, which both rank near the bottom of the league. Marsh usually traces offensive problems back to ball movement, and he’s seen it slow down since the team’s 3-1 start.
“I think over the course of the first several games we were really good at that, and we’ve gotten stagnant over the last couple,” Marsh said. “It hasn’t been for long durations, but it’s been at important moments.”
Marsh is right that quick shots and isolation plays won’t turn the offense around. Especially now that Rickea Jackson — their leading scorer and best shot-creator — is out for the season.
But some of the shooting woes were predictable given the roster. The Sky added many great downhill drivers this past offseason, but few sharpshooters. Their top free-agent addition, Skylar Diggins, is a perfect example. She can blow by defenders with her speed and skillset, but she’s only a career 41.9% shooter and is shooting 39% to start the year.
Marsh, of course, doesn’t believe the team is doomed to poor percentages. He thinks that his system can generate clean looks, and he trusts great players like Diggins to knock down threes when they matter most.
“We’re generating open ones, we just haven’t knocked them down yet,” Marsh said of the team’s 3-point shooting. “We expect that number to turn.”
A hot streak from Diggins would certainly help. So would better shooting from veteran Rachel Banham, the Sky’s only player with a career 3-point percentage above 35%.
But until the team is fully healthy, the fate of the offense might rest on whether young starters Gabriela Jaquez and Jacy Sheldon can get back to where they began.
Both were efficient in the team’s hot start. Sheldon has cooled off, scoring just seven combined points over the last two games. And Jaquez, whose teammates always say is playing like a veteran, had her first rookie-ish performance against the Lynx. She shot 1-for-8, missing layups she’d been making and forcing shots she’d usually leave alone.
The tough outing didn’t seem to faze her, though.
Monday after practice, the rookie sounded like a veteran once again.
“Watching the film today, we saw what we need to do,” Jaquez said. “But also remembering — we still have it in us. We see the good clips as well. It’s there. We just gotta do that more consistently. We have to create four quarters of consistent Chicago Sky basketball and that will lead to wins.”
The best aspect of Sky basketball so far has been their defense, which is still ranked in the top five, despite some recent slippage. But the offense has strong points too. The team rarely turns it over, which is a breath of fresh air from last season. And they get to the free-throw line more than almost any other team, with Jaquez, Diggins, and Kamilla Cardoso leading the way.
“We still believe in ourselves,” Jaquez said. “We’re still gonna be a great team. Just understanding how we have to adjust moving forward.”