Sky hopes at Liberty buoyed by Angel Reese’s return<\/p>\n
The Chicago Sky<\/a>, who are set to visit the New York Liberty<\/a> on Thursday night, finally have standout forward Angel Reese back.<\/p>\n Reese, who is already a two-time All-Star at age 23, returned from a back injury on Tuesday in a 94-88 loss to Seattle. In 26 minutes, Reese posted 19 points, seven rebounds, four assists and one block.<\/p>\n It was her first game since July 29.<\/p>\n “I just want to hoop,” Reese said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Sky fans also want her hooping. In 10 games without Reese this year, the Sky (8-26) are 1-9. In 24 games with her, the Sky is much better at 7-17.<\/p>\n “She looks great,” Sky coach Tyler Marsh said of Reese. “The chemistry with her teammates is still there.”<\/p>\n The Liberty — the reigning WNBA champions — have even greater chemistry. They showed it on Tuesday in an 85-75 win over the best team in the league, the Minnesota Lynx.<\/p>\n New York (22-13) ranks tied with Atlanta for second place in the WNBA standings, but the Liberty are even better at home (14-4). It’s the second-best home record in the league, trailing only Minnesota.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Chicago has the second-worst road record in the league (3-13).<\/p>\n Overall, the Sky have lost five straight games and 13 of their past 14 contests.<\/p>\n New York is 2-0 against Chicago this season, winning 99-74 in May and 85-66 in June.<\/p>\n However, the Liberty have been without seven-time All-Star forward Breanna Stewart since she suffered a bone bruise on her right knee July 26. She has promised to return prior to her birthday on August 27, but there has been no exact target date.<\/p>\n “She’s looking good,” Liberty coach Sandy Brondello said after Stewart ran through her first full practice on Monday. “We’re going to continue building her up.”<\/p>\n Without Stewart, the Liberty on Tuesday got a game-high 22 points and a game-high-tying 10 rebounds from Jonquel Jones. That effort was Jones’ 100th career double-double.<\/p>\n The Liberty also got 17 points and a game-high 11 assists from shooting guard Sabrina Ionescu. In fact, all five Liberty starters scored in double figures.<\/p>\n Ionescu iced the game by making a four-point play in the final minute, sinking a long 3-pointer while drawing a foul.<\/p>\n Interviewed by NBA TV on the court after the game, Ionescu was asked what it felt like to make that shot.<\/p>\n Ionescu smiled and before walking away and said, “night-night.”<\/p>\n –Field Level Media<\/p>\n \n Copyright 2025 STATS LLC and Field Level Media. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Field Level Media is strictly prohibited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sky hopes at Liberty buoyed by Angel Reese’s return The Chicago Sky, who are set to visit the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,726,3457,82,630],"class_list":["post-85074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chicago-sky","tag-new-york-liberty","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85074","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=85074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}