The Chicago Sky remain in free fall following a loss to the two-time defending WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces on Tuesday night.
The heavy 90-71 defeat is Chicago’s seventh in a row, and the streak couldn’t be coming at a worse time as the regular season heads into the home stretch.
The Sky remain locked in a battle for the eighth and final playoff spot in the WNBA, despite an 11-22 win-loss record. It’s the only playoff spot that hasn’t been clinched as of Sept. 4 — and with seven games to go, rising star Angel Reese has made it clear that the future after those seven games matters just as much as the two weeks that remain in the regular season
In a 13-slide Instagram post uploaded Wednesday, Reese wrote that she is “never satisfied with the short term success”.
Serving as a caption to photos that show off her Reeboks, her Beats headphones, and the zest for pro basketball that she has displayed throughout her rookie season, Reese has told her 4.1 million Instagram followers to “wait & watch this long term progression”.
Reese has won plaudits in her rookie year for her elite rebounding, defensive tenacity, and nonstop motor. Even though the injury- and illness-wracked Sky continue to lose, Reese has reeled off three consecutive double-doubles despite her ongoing shooting woes — she is averaging 13.3 points and 13.2 rebounds per contest during her record-breaking rookie campaign.
It didn’t take long for Reese to become a WNBA All-Star, three months after the Sky took her seventh overall in the 2024 draft.
The 22-year-old lefty’s ceiling is only that which she assigns herself, and it would be no great surprise to see her game keep on evolving in the final games of 2024 before an across-the-board improvement in 2025.