{"id":741863,"date":"2026-07-04T00:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T00:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/741863\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T00:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T00:42:09","slug":"amid-losing-season-sky-gm-jeff-pagliocca-still-sees-playoff-potential-and-an-underrated-young-core","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/741863\/","title":{"rendered":"Amid losing season, Sky GM Jeff Pagliocca still sees playoff potential and an underrated young core"},"content":{"rendered":"

LAS VEGAS \u2014 In an essay<\/a> titled \u201cThe Chicago Sky Have Nothing to Look Forward To,\u201d WNBA writer Maitreyi Anantharaman captured the anxiety that hangs over this team.<\/p>\n

The Sky are stuck in no man\u2019s land. At 6-13, they don\u2019t look like a playoff team. But they don\u2019t get the silver linings of a rebuild, either.<\/p>\n

They aren\u2019t the Storm, riding the ascent of young star Dominique Malonga. They aren\u2019t the Sun, waiting on a top-two pick to come save them. The Sky traded away draft capital chasing a win-now roster. And while the league is brimming with young talent from college and overseas, they signed three point guards in their mid-30s.<\/p>\n

To skeptics, that looks less like a franchise with a clear next chapter and more like a banged-up team playing out the twilight of its careers.<\/p>\n

The sunnier view lives in general manager Jeff Pagliocca\u2019s office. Now in his third losing season with the franchise \u2014 with the pressure to turn things around \u2014 Pagliocca still believes in the vision he touted in April.<\/p>\n

\u201cI stand on the success of the offseason,\u201d Pagliocca told the Sun-Times. \u201cWe added a cornerstone of the franchise [Rickea Jackson], we added championship experience [Azur\u00e1 Stevens], we added All-Defensive players [DiJonai Carrington], another future Hall of Famer in Skylar Diggins.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pagliocca doesn\u2019t have a smoking gun for why a roster that looked good on paper hasn\u2019t produced many wins. He acknowledged that losing Jackson, the team\u2019s leading scorer, to a season-ending injury so early took the wind out of the Sky\u2019s sails. It should also be noted that Stevens started the season hurt and Carrington still hasn\u2019t played a game.<\/p>\n

But Pagliocca wouldn\u2019t pin it on injuries.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that [if] we execute better, we come out on top of a number of these games,\u201d Pagliocca said. \u201cWe have to own that. We easily could have closed out three or four games that we lost, and that is on us. We have to own the lack of execution late in games. We\u2019re not going to blame the officials, we\u2019re not going to blame the injuries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Late-game execution has killed them. What could have been a June stretch proving the Sky could beat top teams turned into a run of last-minute losses, capped by an epic fourth-quarter collapse in Dallas.<\/p>\n

Still, Pagliocca sees the momentum shifting. He thinks the Sky have what they need to compete and that the playoffs are still in reach. More than that, he thinks this team does have something to look forward to: its young core.<\/p>\n

Sky center Kamilla Cardoso, drafted No. 3 in 2024, and Jackson, a former lottery pick they traded for over the offseason, have both shown flashes in their first three years in the league.<\/p>\n

But they don\u2019t usually come up in the same conversations as the Storm\u2019s Malonga, the Mystics\u2019 Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen, or the Wings\u2019 Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd. When Pagliocca\u2019s peers voted on the league\u2019s most promising young cores, the Sky didn\u2019t make the cut.<\/p>\n

Some of that skepticism is fair. Jackson shot only 42.7% last season and didn\u2019t defend especially well. Cardoso\u2019s penchant for foul trouble takes her out of games, and most of her scoring still comes right at the rim.<\/p>\n

But Pagliocca doesn\u2019t see his group as less-than.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a number of teams with strong young cores,\u201d he said. \u201cWe feel strongly ours is in that same echelon.\u201d<\/p>\n

The best evidence is Cardoso\u2019s last three weeks: 19.8 points on 73% shooting to go with 8.5 rebounds. She has had great stretches before, and the burden is still on her to prove this one sticks. But it has never looked quite like this.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what you\u2019re seeing now is progress,\u201d Pagliocca said. \u201cI think it\u2019s important to note that she\u2019s 25 years old. I know the world had high expectations. I did and continue to have them, but not every success story has a linear path.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know she wants to be great. She\u2019s very reflective, and I think she knows when she\u2019s not at her best.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think you play a good game and then you struggle the next one, or the next three \u2014 it allows everyone to ask questions. She\u2019ll be the first to say that doubt will creep in from time to time. She just might be sick of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

If that\u2019s true, Pagliocca\u2019s vision might be closer than we think. But the Sky\u2019s ace in the hole is Sydney Taylor.<\/p>\n

Pagliocca discovered the undrafted guard in a Polish league this past offseason. She worked her way into the starting rotation and now has four games with 25 or more points.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe has a chance to be a star,\u201d Pagliocca said. \u201cShe has qualities that players would dream of having athletically. She is a very creative player. She is understanding the importance of defending now. I think she wants to be a two-way player. The sky is absolutely the limit.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even if Pagliocca is right about his core in the long-term, his aggressive dealings have put pressure on the team to succeed immediately.<\/p>\n

The clearest example is the 2027 pick swap he traded to the Mystics to get veteran guard Ariel Atkins last season. Pagliocca bet the Sky would finish ahead of Washington. Instead, the Mystics are the better team. If the season ended today, the Sky would hand Washington their lottery pick and get only a late first-rounder in return.<\/p>\n

That would mean missing a chance at college phenoms such as JuJu Watkins, Madison Booker or Hannah Hidalgo, who could all be available in the 2027 draft.<\/p>\n

Such is the cost of not protecting his lottery picks at a time when he acknowledges the talent coming into the league is significant.<\/p>\n

So how concerned is Pagliocca about that deal?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s on my mind at all times as we go through the season,\u201d Pagliocca said. \u201cBut it doesn\u2019t necessarily dictate how I feel about the games or playoff picture. Of course, the goal is to make the playoffs. Of course, we\u2019d like to finish above Washington. We\u2019d like to finish above all the teams in the league. It\u2019s a little bit of extra motivation due to the nature of the deal. It\u2019s not something I\u2019m obsessing over.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Pagliocca, the justification comes down to what the trade ultimately netted: Jackson, who he believes is an All-WNBA caliber player. He flipped Atkins to the Sparks for Jackson.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re gonna [do that] every single time,\u201d Pagliocca said. \u201cIf that costs a few spots [in the draft order] ultimately, which isn\u2019t even guaranteed yet. I feel passionate about where our team is going and what our trajectory is.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sky have been playing better basketball behind Cardoso and Taylor, with two commanding wins over the Fire last week and a narrow loss to the Aces. But the problems haven\u2019t gone anywhere. They need to rebound better. They need to prove they can close. They need to actually knock off a top team.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are aware we need to dig ourselves out of a hole,\u201d Pagliocca said. \u201cI\u2019m definitely confident where we are moving forward the second half of the season, and for the future, because of what we were able to build in the offseason.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS \u2014 In an essay titled \u201cThe Chicago Sky Have Nothing to Look Forward To,\u201d WNBA writer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":741864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-741863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=741863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/741864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}