Throughout the first season of their rebuild, the Chicago Sky preached patience.
But the team went against that advice, firing coach Teresa Weatherspoon after one year on the job, sources confirmed to the Tribune late Thursday. The Sky went 13-27 under Weatherspoon, finishing 10th out of 12 teams and missing the playoffs for the first time since 2018.
Weatherspoon, 58, did not command results in her first year as a WNBA coach. The offense suffered heavily after a midseason trade sent Marina Mabrey to the Connecticut Sun, gutting the Sky of their only consistent 3-point shooter. The Sky finished last in 3-point shooting and second-to-last in shooting percentage, points per game and offensive rating. And the young group struggled to close out games, finishing the season 8-16 in clutch games.
But Weatherspoon succeeded in one important area: earning the immediate respect and support of star rookies Angel Reese and Kamilla Cardoso. Both emphasized their strong relationship with Weatherspoon during their exit interviews Friday, praising the confidence and personal connection their coach inspired in a young roster.
“I got lucky,” Reese said. “I’ll forever say this.”
Reese said she was “heartbroken” upon learning of Weatherspoon’s firing.
“I’m literally lost for words knowing what this woman meant to me in such a pivotal point in my life,” Reese wrote on X. “She was the only person that believed in me. The one that trusted me. Many don’t even know what it’s like to be a black women in sports when nobody believes in you. You had a tough job. … I came to Chicago because of YOU. You were an unsung hero in my life. … You didn’t deserve this but I can’t thank you enough.”
Reese and Cardoso acknowledged the substantial challenges and learning curve Weatherspoon faced as a first-year coach. Reese said she often tried to give Weatherspoon confidence in return, providing constant feedback and praise.
“Obviously, coming from a 22-year-old, I don’t know if that ever meant anything,” Reese joked.
Inexperience was always the biggest question for Weatherspoon, a Hall of Famer player who was a five-time WNBA All-Star and two-time Defensive Player of the Year with the New York Liberty. She entered her first professional head coaching job with only six years of head coaching experience at Louisiana Tech, plus four years as a player development coach for the New Orleans Pelicans.
The Sky often struggled with simplistic play design. Players praised adjustments made at the Olympic break to install a motion offense that created more high-low play between Cardoso and Reese, giving the guards more off-ball duties and more space to work inside the arc.
Ultimately, the end of the Sky season was out of the control of any coach. The offense couldn’t recover from the Mabrey trade. Chennedy Carter suffered through several weeks of illness, which further derailed lineups.
The Sky were still in position to sneak into the playoffs until the final two weeks, when injuries to Reese and Cardoso effectively ended the season for both rookies and the team.
“One thing that I’m super proud of with this team is how competitive they are and how hard they continued to play each and every night,” Weatherspoon said Friday. “No matter what we went through, no matter the injuries, the sicknesses — everybody stepped between those four lines and they played hard. A lot of people when you’re going through a lot of things just kind of throw the towel in. But that’s not something this team did.”
General manager Jeff Pagliocca will continue in his position with the Sky despite Weatherspoon’s departure. The Sky hired Pagliocca after Weatherspoon, splitting the positions of coach and general manager for the first time in franchise history.
Pagliocca navigated a rookie season alongside Weatherspoon, recouping the majority of the draft capital squandered by former coach/GM James Wade while securing Reese, Cardoso and Carter as key building blocks for the franchise. The pair’s relationship was framed by the front office as the crux of the team’s foundation for the future.
“We have a tremendous connection of what we both see and I think that’s the most important thing,” Weatherspoon said. “Even when you do have that type of connection, it doesn’t always mean that you agree upon everything. But the one thing about Jeff and I is we don’t we don’t leave the table until there’s a solution. That’s a big piece of the puzzle. … This is our first year through this thing, this incredible learning lesson. We learned so much about ourselves, so much about how we can grow even better together.”
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