Should the Townies Move to Seattle?
Pro sport fandom and the feeling of home
Programming Note: We won’t be publishing as much in the off-season, but we will of course do some emergency posts on the latest devastating trade news.
There are many words to describe what is happening to the Chicago Sky right now. “Collapse,” “failure,” “rebuild,” “going backwards to go forwards” are a few that come to mind.
Barring a miracle, the Sky will be duking it out with LA Sparks to avoid being the worst team in the WNBA—a league now stacked with title contenders, from Las Vegas, to Seattle, to New York, to Phoenix and Connecticut.
But the annoying part isn’t that we have no chance at a championship: it’s that we’ve fallen behind even the up-and-coming teams that, two years ago, were in the exact same boat as us.
In 2022, after our WNBA championship team disbanded, our then-GM James Wade refused to rebuild. He proclaimed that he was “not planning on f*cking losing,” and gave up our 2024 and 2025 draft picks to get Marina Mabrey.
Mabrey is a good player who helped prevent the Sky from being bad in 2023. But without another major signing, she was never going to help us be better than Decent.
So we traded a “Bad-but-building-for-the-future” situation for a “Mediocre-but-stuck” one. And then James Wade revealed that what he really meant by “not planning on f*cking losing,” was “not planning on f*cking sticking around, YOLO.”
Now we have a new coach, a new GM, and after another disappointing free agency period came and went, we were forced into trading our only remaining Real Star, Kahleah Copper.
A devastating move that has admittedly gotten the Sky organization “unstuck.”
We got some draft picks back, and will probably gain more with the bottom-of-the-barrel record we are about to have for the next few years.
In other words: we are going back in time and doing what we should have done in 2022.
At the cost of ripping out the heart and destroying the soul of the Chicago Sky.
Should the Townies Move to Seattle?
Kahleah Copper has embodied the Chicago Sky for the last few years, so it’s not surprising that with her gone, I’m feeling sort of disembodied.
Copper was my superhero, the person who could do things I’d always dreamed of doing. She was the fire on a team that included legends like Candace Parker and Courtney Vandersloot and she was the only player to stick it out in Chicago after they left.
Last year a fair question might have been: am I a Chicago Sky fan or a Kahleah Copper fan?
This year the question is: Should the Townies just move to Seattle?
Seattle has MVP-caliber players, they have mountains and a Space Needle, and maybe we could even get the Storm to acquire us—we heard they’re a very supportive organization.
Why suffer in Chicago when we could celebrate in Seattle?
So I reached out to the other Townies via our daily group chat to ask them what’s really behind their Sky fandom, to see if it could be copy-and-pasted into Seattle fandom.
From our Lead Basketball Analyst:
1. Being a Sky superfan lets me connect with my former college teammates and fellow Townies. Especially when I was living in Central Illinois, our common love of the Sky made me feel bonded to them.
2. I am a Chicago suburb native, so I must be a Sky fan if I am to root for a WNBA team. Never forget when Candace came home.
3. There are lots of queers and like-minded humans in Skytown, which makes fandom more comfortable and fun.
4. When I stopped playing basketball, I felt like a piece of me was stripped away. Supporting the Sky with reckless abandon has helped me find joy in basketball in a new way.
Hmmm, so Sky fandom bonded the Townies across space and time, gave us access to a cool, queer environment, and refreshed our connection to b-ball—sounds like these things could be accomplished in Seattle too!
Now we’ll hear from the Voice of Gen Z, who grew up in Cave Creek, Arizona. As is her practice, she went on a really long rant that does eventually circle around to the point, but you really gotta be patient.
Voice of Gen Z:
I was a die hard Phoenix Mercury fan growing up. I was at the 2009 championship game, I got the ring, I had signed Diana Taurasi bobbleheads, and then one day I found out that Taurasi, my lifelong hero, had a wife, she was gay just like me, and that was life-altering in how exciting it was. I was also a big fan of other players around the league: Maya Moore, Elena Delle Donne, and (former Sky legends) the Vanderquigs.
And then in college, I found out from a Reddit thread the Vanderquigs were getting married, and since their wedding registry was publicly listed, I sent them an ice cream scooper.
Then after college I moved to Chicago and it was exciting to have a team to root for after living in Iowa during college. I started going to Sky games with my college teammates (the Townies and associates), which is what cemented my die-hard fandom, as did sitting courtside and being so close to the players.
In other words: it was the people that made Chicago home for me, and so it was the people that made me a die-hard Sky fan.
Both Townies illustrate how pro sports fandom is, to some extent, about the feeling of home. For Chicago-land natives, being a Sky fan might be about honoring one’s hometown and rooting for it to succeed. For the out-of-towners, it might be more of a “home is where the heart is” vibe.
I will also add the concept of “memory” to the idea of fandom and home. Rooting for the Sky this season may be discomforting, but Wintrust Arena holds our memories—from better and worse times.
It holds our highs (Allie Quigley going off to win us the 2021 Championship, the stadium DJ getting really into “Swag Surfin” during the 2021 playoff run) and my lows (Rebekah Gardner season-ending injury, Elena Delle Donne being impervious to me screaming “you ain’t got it.”)
So I think the whole point here is: yes, we could move to Seattle and form a new connection with the Storm, the way our Arizona Townie did with the Sky, but she also low-key rooted for Phoenix when they played the Sky in the 2021 WNBA Finals, because you can’t just let go of your connection to a team once the memories have formed and the experience has shaped you.
So even though it will be years before the Sky can bring Chicago glory again, we’re stuck loving them.
Final Thoughts
The Townies still might move to Seattle one day (for the same reasons that Skylar Diggins-Smith and Nneka Ogwumike did—the Storm would probably give us our own locker rooms and maybe even our own Writing/Tweeting facility.)
But for now we’re sticking it out here in Chicago.
Seattle is craaaazy expensive anyway 😛