The Sky don’t have an All-Star this season, but plenty of players they could have drafted, have traded away or have failed to keep will be in Chicago for the WNBA All-Star Game on Saturday.
Here’s a rundown of their biggest All-Star whiffs, ranked not by the caliber of the player but by what each case reveals about the Sky.
Olivia Miles is the most recent and tantalizing, though that wasn’t entirely the Sky’s fault. Angel Reese represents the costliest breakdown. And Marina Mabrey is the OG example of what keeps going wrong for the Sky.
3. Olivia Miles
The No. 2 pick in the 2026 draft the Lynx used to select Miles would have belonged to the Sky. It’s the pick they gave up in 2024 to snag, then fumble, Reese.
Miles is having an MVP-caliber rookie season, and the Minnesota Star Tribune has deemed her the most likable athlete in the state since Kirby Puckett. In Chicago, she could have been the most likable athlete since someone people actually know.
Such as Michael Jordan.
So why isn’t Miles the No. 1 whiff?
Mostly because bad luck played a major role. Had Miles entered the draft in 2025, which she strongly considered, or had the Wings done what everyone now thinks they should have done in April and selected Miles over Azzi Fudd, she wouldn’t be linked to the Sky.
‘‘You have to get lucky,’’ Lynx head of basketball operations Cheryl Reeve admitted when discussing Miles ending up in Minnesota. ‘‘Lottery balls have to go your way.’’
The aw-shucks modesty from Reeve was also a bit of a flex.
‘‘Obviously, at the 2024 draft, we wanted to take a swing at a lottery pick in 2026,’’ she said. ‘‘That’s what you do when you’re trying to project teams. We have people who get paid to project for us.’’
Catch the subtle reminder that the Lynx have invested in number-crunching and forecasting in a way that the Sky — and many other teams — have not?
Still, the Sky deserve some credit for identifying Reese’s potential. They saw past the conventional wisdom that her game wouldn’t translate from college to the WNBA. If Reese were playing in her third All-Star Game for the Sky, Miles would be a road not taken, not a whiff.
2. Angel Reese
The Sky and Reese mutually decided to part ways this past offseason, leading to her trade to the Dream.
In a vacuum, sending away one of the most recognizable young stars in the game and the best rebounder in the league for what likely will be low-first-round picks always will look pretty ugly.
But there’s a world in which the surrounding moves validate the new direction. Rickea Jackson might have the talent and personality to become the face of the Sky once her ACL heals. Adding Azura Stevens to space the floor has been successful. Undrafted rookie Sydney Taylor also is showing the potential to be a star.
The problem is that none of it has shown up in the victory column yet.
And in trading up for Reese, the Sky essentially leveraged their own lack of foresight. They sacrificed a pick in a loaded 2026 draft for a star they knew would be a handful, then showed little savvy in managing the relationship.
They fired Teresa Weatherspoon, the coach Reese called the reason she was in Chicago. They failed to move the team out of the suburban park district during Reese’s time here. They didn’t provide the resources or continuity necessary to make such a major investment last.
That’s not to let Reese totally off the hook. Her public criticism of the roster genuinely didn’t fly with her teammates, and her talents weren’t enough to make the Sky a winning team.
But her assessment of the organization was true, and her willingness to say it wasn’t out of character. The Sky got what they paid for. They sold their lottery ticket to Miles to bet on a star who calls it like she sees it, and it went about as well as the Lynx projected.
1. Marina Mabrey
Mabrey is the original example of the Sky’s intertwining problems since the core of their 2021 championship team broke up.
They can identify and acquire talent, often by making bets on players who haven’t always stuck elsewhere, but they fail to build a strong enough structure around them to make Chicago different.
After a brief stint with the Sun, Mabrey has proved herself with the expansion Tempo to be the bucket former Sky coach and general manager James Wade envisioned. She tied the WNBA’s single-game scoring record with 53 points and is shooting 39.2% from three-point range on 8.4 attempts per game.
Wade sacrificed a pile of draft capital to bring her in, confident he could nurture her into an All-Star. Then he left midway through the 2023 season, and Mabrey asked out midway through 2024.
She wanted to keep her full reasoning ‘‘in-house,’’ but she acknowledged that she had been brought to Chicago to play in Wade’s system, not Weatherspoon’s.
That’s the trouble with changing coaches, systems and organizational direction so frequently: A player acquired for one vision quickly can find herself stranded in another.
The part that stings is that the trade could have worked. None of the draft capital the Sky surrendered for Mabrey amounted to anyone special, and Mabrey became an All-Star.
Which is to say that the Sky’s aggressive approach could be vindicated if they could retain stars.
Instead, Mabrey — like so many others — blossomed elsewhere.
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