Reviewing Our Controversial Claims
We temper our extreme views on Liz Williams and Courtney Williams, two key off-season pick-ups
The Townies watched the Sky’s last loss at a bachelorette party and I gotta say, the party guests were not impressed with the Sky. They said our passing looked…drunk. And is there anyone who knows more about drunkenness than bachelorette party guests?
The Sky are on a four-game losing streak and have dropped to eighth place in the league standings. Not horrendous, but the party-goers correctly identified that we’ve hit a rough patch.
Against the Mystics on Sunday, we turned the ball over 20 times, way more than our season average of 15 per game, which is bad to begin with.
The other problem in Washington was Kahleah Copper only scoring eight points. A basketball team is rarely going to look impressive when its best player hits only four shots.
However, our national correspondent made the case that Marina Mabrey is actually the Sky’s best player so far this season, a point which I shut down—Cop is our top gun, case closed.
Then today I discovered that Mabrey is now our leading scorer (her 36-point performance against the Fever certainly helped). So I’ll re-open that topic for debate and try to remember to not be such a Chicago Sky know-it-all all the time.
Reviewing our Most Controversial Claims
If you are running an internet blog, you have to say controversial things to get people to pay attention to you, but you don’t have to be accountable for those statements once you’ve been proven wrong.
The Sky Townies are different.
We say controversial things for clicks, but then we own up to them.
Controversial Claim #1: The Townies prefer watching Liz Williams over [former Sky star] Candace Parker
From our From Pretty to Gritty post on May 24th:
“I’m being a little provocative now, trying to get under the skin of our Lead Basketball Analyst/Candace Sympathizer, but I think I’d rather watch you [Liz] play than Candace Parker. You are the scrappy veteran hustle player the Sky haven’t had in a while, and after two years of watching Candace not box-out (while the media fawns over her), your hustle is really soothing.”
Did we believe this claim when we said it?
I mean, I sort of did. I think as a fan you develop extreme opinions based on past traumas, and I felt traumatized by the Sky’s lack of defensive toughness last year—especially in the playoffs.
So when I saw Liz Williams hustling her ass off in her first two games, it energized me. Of course she wouldn’t be able take over games like Candace did, but maybe she would be the core of a new, gritty Sky identity.
Not all the Townies felt this way. Most WNBA observers, including our Lead Basketball Analyst, would probably reject the comparison entirely: Candace Parker is a seven-time All-WNBA First Team player who will go down as one of the league GOATs, while Elizabeth Williams’ highest honor is WNBA All-Defensive Team.
Candace was also a hometown hero, beloved by Chicagoans ever since she dunked a basketball in a high school game. She always got the loudest cheers during the starting line-ups. The most exciting games in Wintrust were the ones when Candace was going off.
So I sometimes felt alone in my view that she 1) didn’t box out, 2) forced too many shots and 3) regularly took plays off defensively.
But then I’d walk out of the stadium and hear plenty of fans lamenting about her ailing knees and that she should probably retire!!!
Ugh! What was with all the hoopla if we were just gonna talk behind her back anyway??? We should have been more direct and treated her more like the Very-Good-But-Aging-Veteran that she is now, rather than the MVP she once was.
However, our Lead Basketball Analyst points out that the team sort of needed Candace to be MVP-quality to be competitive last year. “We perhaps needed Candace to be more than she could give,” says our LBA.
Do we believe this claim now?
Sadly, the whole “From Pretty to Gritty” thesis has not panned out: I’m pretty sure the highest compliment our 10th ranked defense would get is “inconsistent.”
When it comes to Liz Williams though, she’s holding her own! Through 12 games, Liz is actually outscoring, outrebounding, and even out-earning Candace Parker!
Obviously there’s a reason Candace’s production has gone down: she’s on a terrifyingly good team that reminds me of the Monstars from Space Jam, so she doesn’t need to drop triple-doubles like in the old days. The opposite team dynamics are true for Liz: our roster keeps shrinking, meaning she has more opportunity to produce. She’s capitalized!
I still love Liz’s hustle and think she’s super solid, but 12 games in, her limitations are more clear. She can make lay-ups off the backboard, but she has very little touch in front of the rim. She has a couple strong post moves, but is much better off a slip or a roll, and struggles to string complex back-to-the-basket moves together. She cannot shoot a free throw or mid-range shot to save her life.
Our Lead Basketball Analyst summarizes her feelings on the matter:
“I still prefer watching Candace’s versatile offensive skillset. It’s painful to me when Liz passes up wide-open jumpers or shanks lay-ups. Perhaps if I loved watching defense more, my answer would be different.”
Controversial Claim #2: Courtney Williams has no future with the Chicago Sky
From our The-Survivin’-Somehow-Sky post on June 2nd:
I’m not sure Courtney Williams is gonna work out. Sorry. I’m not trying to be a hater. She seems really likable as a teammate, and as a fan, I love having her for clutch scenarios. She rises to the occasion in the fourth quarter, and I know she’ll turn it on in the playoffs.
BUT.
She’s on a one-year contract, and if we are building the team around Kahleah Copper and Marina Mabrey—players who are focused on creating their own shots—we need a point guard who is going to take responsibility for making the whole offense gel. Is that going to be Courtney Williams, who prefers to hang in the background and pick her spots to make plays? I don’t think so.
Did we really believe this when we said it?
No. This take was for the clicks. I have no idea how James Wade or any WNBA General Manager puts together a team, and plus, it turns out Cop will be a free agent at the end of the year, so there’s no guarantee we’re building around her.
I did genuinely think Courtney Williams had been a dud relative to expectations though. And I’ve been surprised by how much push back we’ve gotten from Skytown on that. Yes, she had a good series against the New York Liberty and has had some nice fourth quarter moments. She’s also eighth in the league in assists, and I think has developed a really nice guard-post offensive connection with Liz Williams.
But I’m sorry—I think it’s impossible to argue she’s having a good year! She’s shooting poorly, playing bad defense, and not taking care of the ball. Here’s my irrefutable evidence:
Scoring average: 7 points per game, down from 11 points last year
FG percentage: 32%, down from 43% last year
Steals per game: 0.5, down from 1 last year
Turnovers per game: 2.3, up from 1.9 last year
Do we believe it now?
I still can’t comment on her future with the Sky because I don’t have James Wade’s number (yet), but I can tell you that I really do not like Courtney Williams right now. Like, what is going on?
Why is she laughing with the trainers on the bench while having zero points in our heart wrenching loss to the Fever? Why is she acting like a star for the cameras but not trying that hard on defense?
It’s pissing me off, especially because Kahleah Copper, Dana Evans, Alanna Smith and others are clearly locked in, trying to do whatever it takes to win. It’s not OK for Courtney Williams to just turn it on in the playoffs, or the fourth quarter, or whatever.
Look: unlike many of our associates, I was pumped about getting Courtney Williams from Connecticut. She killed us in the last two games of Semi-Finals last year, shooting 65% from the field, but more importantly she did the little things: she got blocks, she rebounded, she minimized turnovers. She was a key factor in Connecticut getting to the 2022 WNBA Finals.
So when the Sky’s legendary point guard Courtney Vandersloot left for the Liberty and we picked up Courtney Williams from Connecticut—despite how weird it made me feel to have a sworn enemy on the team—I told myself it was an upgrade.
We’d be better off with the younger Courtney Williams than an aging Courtney Vandersloot. Though Sloot had been so clutch in the regular season, she ran out of steam when it mattered most.
Everyone remembers Game 5 of the WNBA Semi-Finals. We were up ten in the fourth quarter, five minutes away from a repeat Finals appearance. Then Connecticut went on a run, during which Sloot had no points, no assists, and three turnovers. Meanwhile, Courtney Williams had three assists, three rebounds, and two huge buckets.
It made no sense, honestly, that Courtney Williams got the best of Sloot in the Semis: Sloot was and still is a much better player. Instead of accepting that confusing reality, I developed the extreme belief that Courtney Williams would help our team more than Sloot. But that pretend belief just made even angrier when Williams underwhelmed this season.
In a strange way, I think if I can forgive Courtney Vandersloot for that fourth quarter against Connecticut, I’ll have more kindness in my heart for Courtney Williams.
Our next game is TODAY Thursday June 22th @ 7p.m. against the Washington Mystics at Wintrust Arena!!! See you all there.
I agree that Courtney Williams is a problem. While the team needs players with a positive vibe, her attitude is more “I don’t care.” Carelessness is not a good vibe. As for Liz Williams, the first few games she really played within herself. Now she’s been looking too often to shoot when she has a lot of trouble finishing unless she’s within two feet of the hoop. At a key moment in the last game against Indiana, she took it upon herself to look for a shot when Mabrey and Evans were on fire. That’s just not understanding the game. But this seems like a big problem with the team. The players don’t seem to know their roles and don’t seem to have a strategic approach to the game. Wade has lost this team and has little idea, it seems, how to coach and develop a team. His rotations and substitutions are often puzzling at best. He spends too much time complaining and griping rather than managing and focusing his team. The team has really deteriorated since the 5-3 start. They don’t move on offense. They stand around til someone goes one on one. Wade should be integrating Parks and Soule much more for the rest of the season. But he doesn’t seem to know how to develop a team. I’m increasingly convinced Candace Parker coached the 2021 team. Wade needs to remove himself as coach and just GM.