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Three days into training camp, a defensive drill forced new and returning Chicago Sky players to start watching the clock in earnest.
The drill sounds simple: Make defensive stops for 35 seconds straight. In reality it’s a grind, forcing players to swarm to the ball and crash the boards with the intensity of a boxer in the closing seconds of a round.
One group held out until the final two seconds only to allow a 3-pointer, resetting the clock to 35 seconds to a chorus of exhausted groans. But the payoff was also immediate — when guard Dana Evans tipped a pass to make a final stop with time expiring, her teammates exploded onto the court in celebration, enveloping the third-year guard as she chirped at the training staff.
After a roster overhaul in the offseason, coach James Wade is prepared to build the 2023 season around the Sky’s defense.
“That’s what helps reinvent the culture of what you want,” Wade said. “Because it’s really not something that you have to evaluate and think about. It comes from (taps chest) here. It comes from your will.
“You don’t have to have talent to want to stay in front of somebody. You don’t have to have talent to want to go get a rebound. It’s all about will and wanting to be better than the person in front of you.”
In the opening days of training camp, the Sky already were defining their defensive psyche for this season: heavy perimeter pressure at the point of attack paired with a switch-heavy mentality to keep opposing guards outside the paint.
Wade believes this defensive scheme will require a high level of athleticism and endurance. It also will emphasize defensive versatility, which became a focus during player acquisition in the offseason.
“We can guard multiple positions really well,” forward Elizabeth Williams said. “If we have to hedge, if we have to switch, I think people will be able to recover and adjust. That makes for an exciting defensive team.”
A switch-heavy defense places heavy pressure on the forwards and centers, who are mostly new after the departures of Azurá Stevens and Candace Parker. Ruthy Hebard is the only returning center who played meaningful minutes last season, and she will be unavailable for the start of the season after the birth of her son in April.
The Sky made three major acquisitions to retool the frontcourt: Williams, Isabelle Harrison and Alanna Smith.
“I have a lot of trust in our bigs,” Smith said. “We’re long, we’re athletic but I think we’re smart too. So we know our limits. We’re not getting in people’s grills. We can keep people in front. I really like a switching defense because it just disrupts.”
Guard Marina Mabrey is set to arrive in Chicago on Thursday after leading Schio to the Serie A championship in Italy on Tuesday.
Wade attempted to keep up with the action on his phone during his drive home, but he was forced to pull over in Evanston midway through the game as Mabrey dropped 37 points. She finished 8-for-11 from 3-point range, earning MVP honors.
Mabrey will not travel with the team to Friday’s preseason game in Dallas, where she formerly played.
Williams participated in her first practice Wednesday after missing the first two days of camp while getting physical clearance from the team. She played for Mersin in the Turkish EuroLeague in the offseason and played in the title game — which Mersin lost to Fenerbahçe — on April 25 before reporting to Chicago.
The WNBA released a set of key rule changes for the 2023 season Wednesday, including the adoption of a coach’s challenge.
Coaches will be allowed to challenge one play per game. A challenged call must fall under one of three events:
- A called foul on the team challenging the call.
- An out-of-bounds ruling.
- A goaltending or basket interference violation.
The coach’s challenge will become the only way to review an out-of-bounds call at any stage of a game, a change from previous seasons in which they were reviewed in the final two minutes of the fourth quarter and overtime periods.
Teams must call a timeout to initiate a challenge and will regain that timeout if they win the challenge.
After joking that he planned to use his first challenge in the opening seconds of a game, Wade acknowledged that the new rule will create a learning curve for him and his coaching staff as they approach the season.
