Sky assistant coach Latricia Trammell was just thinking how happy she looked.
Two days before Sky forward Rickea Jackson tore her ACL, Trammell noticed her smile, her energy, her voice. Jackson kept telling reporters how she wanted to run through a wall for her coaches and teammates. It stuck out to Trammell in part because she’d coached Jackson in Los Angeles, in a system that didn’t quite suit her. For the first time, Jackson was playing in a system fitted to her strengths.
It showed.
She was scoring 22 points per game through three games, the highest mark of her career. She was answering the coaching staff’s challenge to take leaps as a defender, rebounder and playmaker too. She looked like an All-Star in the making.
Then Jackson tore her ACL on May 17 in the final game of a road trip against the Lynx. She will need surgery and miss the rest of the season.
“We’re devastated that Rickea suffered this injury, but we are confident she will make a full recovery,” general manager Jeff Pagliocca said in a statement. “Rickea was playing at an All-Star and All-Defensive level early in the season. We are certain she was primed for a career year. Our world-class medical staff will work hard with Rickea, who is one of the toughest players in the league, to get her back on the court.”
Coach Tyler Marsh echoed the sentiment at practice Tuesday.
“You feel sad for Rickea,” Marsh said. “She was in a really good place, mentally and physically, and she was playing great basketball.”
Her good place, her great basketball — they felt so right. She’d made it to the other side of an alleged violent attack by her ex-boyfriend, James Pearce Jr., who was charged with battery and stalking this past winter. She’d found a team that wanted to make her the centerpiece. Trammell said it felt like adversity had lifted.
Now Jackson has to fight through it again.
“We’re just surrounding her with love and comfort and letting her know that we’re here for her in any way possible,” Marsh said. “We’re not going anywhere, she’s not going anywhere. We’re here for the long haul with Rickea.”
That is the silver lining: the long-term trajectory still points upward. The Sky have Jackson under contract through the 2027 season, and can demonstrate through the recovery process that they are worthy of a long-term partnership.
But in the short term, there are no easy answers.
The Sky offense hasn’t clicked yet — something Marsh acknowledged Tuesday — and now they’re losing their leading scorer.
They’ll also face the consequence of loading the roster with guards and will be even more undersized without her.
Marsh can go small in the starting lineup and replace Jackson with veteran guard Natasha Cloud, or go with rookie Aicha Coulibaly, who adds a little more size. Neither option really fills the void.
Still, at practice Tuesday, Marsh seemed confident about a by-committee approach.
“We still have a good team,” he said. “We still have valuable pieces in that locker room that are ready to go out and perform.”
He has reason for that confidence.
When Jackson went down against the Lynx, the Sky (3-1) rallied around her and pulled off an impressive road win. They have been tougher defensively than anyone anticipated, in large part because of their guards — Gabriela Jaquez, Jacy Sheldon and Cloud.
Marsh’s team has some real fight in them.
And help is on the way. At some point this season, the Sky expect to get back three players currently injured: Courtney Vandersloot, Azurá Stevens and DiJonai Carrington. Marsh said that Stevens, a stretch big, could return as soon as this week.
But even that committee can’t replace Jackson. Nobody on this roster can. The Sky know it, and now they have to figure out how to live without her.
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