{"id":86387,"date":"2025-06-09T07:54:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T07:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/86387\/"},"modified":"2025-06-09T07:54:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T07:54:11","slug":"chicago-sky-standout-suffers-season-ending-injury-and-2-key-questions-emerge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/86387\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago Sky standout suffers season-ending injury \u2014 and 2 key questions emerge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chicago Sky<\/a> point guard Courtney Vandersloot <\/a>has torn her right ACL, the team announced on Sunday evening. Vandersloot suffered the injury when she drove to the basket in Saturday\u2019s match-up against the Indiana Fever and was carried off the court. <\/p>\n

The 36-year-old guard has been one of Chicago\u2019s top players this season, averaging 10.6 points and 5.3 assists per game. In her absence, an already-difficult season for the Sky will only get more challenging. <\/p>\n

Vandersloot, a five-time WNBA<\/a> All-Star, has spent 12 of her 14 WNBA seasons with the Sky. She\u2019s won two WNBA championships \u2014 one with the Sky and one with the New York Liberty \u2014 and ranks second all-time in WNBA regular season assists. <\/p>\n

The injury immediately poses two questions: what does Vandersloot\u2019s future look like, and how will Chicago survive the rest of the season without their floor general? <\/p>\n

Vandersloot will likely miss all of this season and the upcoming Unrivaled season <\/p>\n

Most basketball players are sidelined for a year after tearing their ACLs, and it\u2019s unlikely that Vandersloot will be able to return to the court any sooner. <\/p>\n

As it currently stands, Vandersloot is the third-oldest player in the league, with only Seattle Storm forward Alysha Clark (aged 37) and Indiana Fever forward DeWanna Bonner (also aged 37) ahead of her. Whether the Hall of Fame point guard will endure a grueling rehab process and return to the floor remains to be seen. <\/p>\n

The already-struggling Sky will now be even more shorthanded <\/p>\n

The Sky are currently 2-5 and owners of the WNBA\u2019s third-worst record. Now, they\u2019ll be without their third-leading scorer and leading playmaker in Vandersloot. So far this season, offseason acquisition Ariel Atkins has been the team\u2019s leading scorer, averaging 13.7 points on 43.2% shooting. But, the team\u2019s decision to trade away the No. 3 pick to the Washington Mystics to acquire Atkins has been scrutinized \u2014 Sonia Citron, who the Mystics selected with the pick, has averaged 14.4 points on 48.9% shooting. <\/p>\n

In addition, the Sky\u2019s two star post players have struggled this season; Angel Reese, who was an All-Star last season and averaged 13.6 points on 39.1% shooting, is now down to 9.1 points per game on 30.9% shooting. Kamilla Cardoso\u2019s efficiency has also regressed, albeit much more slightly \u2014 the 6\u20197 center went from averaging 9.8 points and 7.9 rebounds on 52.1% shooting last season to 10.9 points and 6.1 rebounds on 50.8% this season.<\/p>\n

In Vandersloot\u2019s absence, the Sky may decide to survey the trade market ahead of next month\u2019s deadline to acquire younger talent or simply a playmaker to shoulder the point guard responsibilities. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chicago Sky point guard Courtney Vandersloot has torn her right ACL, the team announced on Sunday evening. Vandersloot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3724],"tags":[466,273,7,919,416,16878,5355,28,1035,462,2808,415,2084,11559,7423,1747,458,5083,13101,465],"class_list":{"0":"post-86387","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-all-womens-sports","9":"tag-and","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-chicago","12":"tag-com","13":"tag-emerge","14":"tag-ending","15":"tag-front-page","16":"tag-injury","17":"tag-key","18":"tag-questions","19":"tag-sbnation","20":"tag-season","21":"tag-sky","22":"tag-standout","23":"tag-suffers","24":"tag-wnba","25":"tag-wnba-content","26":"tag-wnba-news","27":"tag-womens-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114652332960346844","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}