The image is still fresh. Courtney Vandersloot – Chicago’s heartbeat, Chicago’s brain – grimacing on the floor, clutching her knee. The moment she went down against the Indiana Fever, the vibe in Wintrust Arena flatlined. And just like that, a season already limping forward seemed doomed to collapse. But Angel Reese didn’t get that memo. She never does.

In the aftermath of Vandersloot’s ACL tear, a season-ender, maybe even a career-definer, it would’ve been easy for the Sky to fade into lottery obscurity. And honestly, no one would’ve blamed them. The numbers were already screaming bottom-dweller. A 2–7 record, league-worst turnover rate (19 per game), and a defense that bleeds points like an open faucet. Getting run off the floor by 20+ became a nightly ritual. So, the vibes? Cooked.

But instead of crumbling, Reese doubled down. Then she tripled down and delivered a message that flipped the switch, “Yeah, I told them we had that time out that 12 points can flip easy,” she said after the game, minutes before dropping her first career triple-double in a comeback win that felt less like a box score line and more like a declaration. She wasn’t just talking to the team. She was mainly talking to Hailey Van Lith, the rookie who’d looked out of place for most of the season, until Reese quite literally willed her into the moment.

“We know how it feels to be up and then go back down,” she continued. “So staying poised at the right time... I was talking to Hailey the whole time. Like, ‘You’re a rookie, but your opportunity has arrived. Step up to the plate and maximize your opportunity.’”

And stepping up is what HVL did. While Chicago kept things interesting through the three quarters, they still held slim leads nervously. But then came the fourth, and Hailey Van Lith decided it was time to turn in her test with flair. She dropped four quick points during an 8-2 run that gave the Sky their first double-digit lead at 67-56 with under 8 minutes left. From there, the Sun never got within nine. And then Reese wrapped up her triple-double with a slick assist to Ariel Atkins at 2:46, closing out the quarter.

Well, truly a teamwork, and as for Van Lith’s stats, she posted her career high while coming off the bench. She added 16 points and a tidy +23 in just 24 minutes. Maybe, just maybe, the memories of December 2021 came rushing back to her when she helped Louisville hand UConn its only loss at this very arena.

Angel Reese Refuses to Fold, Becomes the Sky’s Unexpected Floor General

Well, it makes sense why Angel Reese is stepping into this leadership role. After Vandersloot’s injury, the question wasn’t just big, it was nuclear: Do the Sky blow it all up?

In most WNBA front offices, that kind of talk escalates fast. Especially if you lose your franchise point guard on June 7th in a rough loss to Indiana. Then you get beat back-to-back, first by the Liberty, then by Brittney Griner’s Atlanta Dream. That’s usually the moment GMs start circling the trade button. Not in Chicago. “Yeah, never. No. Zero,” said GM Jeff Pagliocca to the Chicago Tribune when asked about trading core players for a first-round pick. Let’s decode that.

Chicago doesn’t even own its natural 2026 first-rounder. Instead, they’re banking on a lottery-dependent pick from Phoenix, which means the worse the Mercury do, the better the Sky fare. Tanking? Useless. It’s like belly-flopping into a pool and watching someone else collect your medal.

Pagliocca knows this. So instead of throwing in the towel, he’s throwing punches—calculated ones. “We’ve gotten run out of the gym a few times,” he admitted. “And that should be enough to embarrass people into taking their matchups much more seriously.” Translation? Losing is one thing. Lying down? Not happening in Chicago.

“Give me the Connecticut pick and we’ll go through free agency,” Pagliocca said. “As far as next year, I feel OK with where we are with Connecticut’s pick and (Sivka). I feel like we’re protected as far as good players. We’ll have a potential lottery pick and then we’ll have a 6-foot-4 shooter. We’ll have all the start that we need.”

But what they needed right now, desperately, was a point guard. And Angel Reese? She became one.

She didn’t light up the box score as a scorer. In fact, she was just 2-of-7 from the field. But she quarterbacked the entire offense with 11 assists. It was the most by any player on the floor. Ariel Atkins had 4. And while everyone else clanked their way through a rough shooting night—Atkins at 4-of-11, Rebecca Allen a cold 0-for-8—Hailey Van Lith, Reese’s old LSU partner-in-crime, stepped into the void. She scored 16 points on 6-of-8 shooting, shouldering the offense when no one else could find the net.

So yeah, they didn’t fold. They adapted. Midseason, midgame, mid-chaos. Angel Reese didn’t just survive the moment.
She created it.