Happy Tuesday, Ball-Knowers!

After a pretty heavy week of serious WNBA discourse, there’s something nice about a relatively low-impact piece of mess that’s fun to talk about. Skylar Diggins will be coming off the bench for the Chicago Sky in tonight’s game and immediately voiced her displeasure with the move. Head Coach Tyler Marsh hasn’t given a real tactical explanation as to why and mainly has inferred that it’s due to some kind of chemistry issue.

Yes, jobs and records are at-stake here but, to me at least, this feels like a great palate cleanser of dialogue. It’s involves the Sky — a perennial paragon of dysfunction — , Diggins — herself an outspoken star — and General Manager Jeff Pagliocca, who jokingly stated that he couldn’t build a losing roster this year or suffer the wrath of Diggins. There’s some great WNBA lore to unearth, a good player vs. front office dynamic and enough characters that you can engage in some good-ole-Bill-Simmons-style conspiracies without feeling concerned about the second order effects of such a scenario.

Tyler and I dove into that on YouTube and, just a bit further down the page in today’s newsletter, I explore what it means on the floor.

Let’s get to it!

Tyler’s Monday Night game recap…

Five Out in Video Form…

In Audio Form…

And In Print…

I’ve written this portion and deleted it multiple times over. Faulkner couldn’t conceive of a way to properly describe the Chicago Sky. They’re The Office come to life. It’s basketball performance art. It’s truly the gift that keeps on giving. As I mentioned earlier in the newsletter, what makes the Sky’s controversies so delightful is that they’re pretty big stories within the context of the WNBA. But outside of that, they don’t carry a ton of real world, big deal consequences that takes the focus away from the game or the franchise.

Head Coach Tyler Marsh told Diggins she would be benched, Diggins took to social media to voice her displeasure, Alissa Hirsh had a piece in the Chicago Sun-Times in which the star guard let all her frustrations out and, at the same time, Colin Salao of Front Office Sports drops a story about further delays to the Sky’s practice facility in Bedford Park.

Huge mess, low stakes. A genuinely perfect story for WNBA fans right now.

The Sky just can’t get out of their own way. Once again, a star player is expressing a displeasure with the organization that stems, it seems, from a pattern of bad communication. You have a GM in Jeff Pagliocca with a very clear allegiance to another star guard in Courtney Vandersloot who just so happens to have returned right as the problems started. Marsh, who has dealt with his own share of skeptics this year, doesn’t seem like the type of personality who thrives in this kind of environment. In some ways, this feels reminiscent of Chris Koclanes’ short stint with the Dallas Wings last season.

While it’s fun to point and laugh at the absurdity of it all, I do feel for the Chicago Sky faithful. There’s always a promise of tomorrow that you’re sold and a bunker mentality around anything resembling criticism that you have to deal with. Independent owners, who by and large have been great stewards of their teams, have to be guilty by association as the Sky continue to prove themselves incapable of rising to the occasion required by this new collective bargaining agreement. You need two hands now to count the amount of players that have openly expressed issues with the franchise. At some point, it’s not everyone else’s fault.

An unhappy Skylar Diggins can very well destroy a locker room, and she’s going to be going up against what appears to be a united front in Vandersloot, Marsh and Pagliocca. That’s not a good recipe for being the playoff team you expected to be at the start of this season. Eventually, it may get right in Chicago, but for now I wouldn’t fault you if you just cashed in your chips on this team ever being functional under this current ownership group.

Meanwhile, the L.A. Sparks are proving that you can have an ownership group with a ton of money but if you don’t hire good basketball people, things can still go sideways. The Sparks were thoroughly beaten by the Seattle Storm on Monday night, falling to 1-5 without superstar guard Kelsey Plum in the lineup. Head Coach Lynne Roberts wasn’t shy coming into the year about how much she planned on showcasing the former Las Vegas Aces star. I’m just not sure any of us really knew the extent to which Roberts would do it.

Plum had unsustainably high usage before getting hurt and now reports out of Los Angeles are that she may be out for a little longer than anticipated. It’s a tough pill to swallow for KP, who was on an MVP contender pace in what was shaping up to be a career best season. It also lays bare just how much the front office, led by GM Reagan Pebley, invested in this NBA style-system.

I have to admire bets, and I’d like to think that I do. Jeff Pagliocca isn’t all-bad in my book because, at the very least, he took some swings to get Chicago into a place to compete instead of wishing and hoping they’d strike gold in an admittedly talented set of draft classes. I feel the same about Pebley and Roberts, who had a clear vision for what they wanted and committed to putting it together.

Unfortunately, that’s the thing about bets. When you put in big money, you can lose big money really easily. At the current moment, it just doesn’t feel like there is a way out of this tailspin that doesn’t require something substantial. Roberts wanted to build a team that could win now but what does the franchise decide to do if it appears that just letting go of the rope is the best course of action? L.A. does have a first round pick in the 2027 draft and a certain superstar who thrives in a high usage guard role is out there. Which leads one to wonder if Team Juju would even want Roberts leading the way. Or if Plum would accept that either.

These are no the complex questions Los Angeles has the misfortune of answering. And given their week, in which they’ve made a flurry of roster moves at the end of the bench, it looks like they don’t feel like they have a lot of time to figure it out.

Dallas Wings (13-8) vs. New York Liberty (13-8): 8:00 PM ET, ESPN

Paige vs. Sabrina tonight so naturally, it’s Chauny’s Hater Super Bowl. If you’re a regular reader/viewer/listener and you think this will be the night where our resident Hater-in-Chief will have to praise one of her opps, prepare to be disappointed. As for me? I have agendas at play. Paige is making a push into the MVP conversation while Ionescu needs to start stringing some good performances together now that she feels back in game form. But ultimately, it may be a Stewie takeover game. Dallas doesn’t seem to have a lot of defensive frontcourt answers right now and no one has dominated the interior like the Liberty’s superstar forward this season.

Liberty feeling like ‘different team’ heading into second tilt against surging Wings by Madeline Kenney, New York Post

Reusse: Cheryl Reeve has built the Lynx into a threat yet again as she chases WNBA wins record by Patrick Reusse, Minnesota Star-Tribune

Chicago Sky Shuffle Practice Venues As Facility Delay Continues by Colin Salao, Front Office Sports

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