{"id":576849,"date":"2026-04-02T06:35:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T06:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/576849\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T06:35:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T06:35:12","slug":"chicago-sky-move-out-of-the-wnba-expansion-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/576849\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago Sky move out of the WNBA expansion draft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Chicago Sky players will not be available for selection in Friday\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/2025\/07\/07\/chicago-sky-wnba-expansion-new-cba\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">expansion draft<\/a> after the team made a pair of trades with the Portland Fire and the Toronto Tempo.<\/p>\n<p>The trades involve picks in the 2026 WNBA draft, which will be held on April 13. The Sky made a second-round pick swap with the Fire, exchanging the No. 17 pick for the No. 21 pick. Chicago also sent the No. 26 pick to Toronto. In return, the Fire and the Tempo won\u2019t select Sky players in the expansion draft.<\/p>\n<p>This will leave the Sky with the Nos. 5, 21 and 32 picks in the 2026 WNBA draft.<\/p>\n<p>Although other players \u2014 including free agents like Rachel Banham and retired players like Allie Quigley \u2014 were technically available in their player pool, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/2026\/03\/27\/chicago-sky-wnba-expansion-draft\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the Sky were debating a decision<\/a> between protecting five of eight players: Kamilla Cardoso, Angel Reese, Hailey Van Lith, Maddie Westbeld, Ariel Atkins, Aicha Coulibaly, Sevgi Uzun and Aj\u0161a Sivka.<\/p>\n<p>Wednesday\u2019s trades will allow the Sky to return their four under-contract players \u2014 Cardoso, Reese, Van Lith and Westbeld \u2014 in addition to Sivka, who was drafted in 2025 and is expected to sign a contract this summer. The team will also attempt to return Atkins in free agency.<\/p>\n<p>The expansion draft will take place Friday, with two rounds in which the Fire and the Tempo will be allowed to select a maximum of one pick from each team. The Fire will select first and the Tempo will follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chicago Sky players will not be available for selection in Friday\u2019s expansion draft after the team made a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,726,104252,82,45963,43408,630,111859,4501],"class_list":["post-576849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chicago-sky","tag-portland-fire","tag-sports","tag-toronto-tempo","tag-trades","tag-wnba","tag-wnba-expansion-draft","tag-womens-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}