Skylar Diggins recently expressed her frustration with the Chicago Sky struggles this season and said the team needs to get out of its “loser mentality.” Her comments seemed like a continuation of the issues the franchise faced last season before Angel Reese was traded to Atlanta. Chicago hosted Reese and the Dream on Tuesday night, losing 82-75.
The Sky started their 2026 campaign 3-1, but then disaster struck when leading scorer Rickea Jackson tore her ACL in the game against the Minnesota Lynx on May 17. The team has gone 1-7 since then and fallen to 12th place, which leaves them 2 ½ games out of the eighth and final playoff spot. That’s bad news for a team desperate to make the playoffs this season because they owe the Mystics a 2027 first-round pick swap via last year’s Ariel Atkins trade. Just a few months ago, the Sky had to give up the No. 2 pick (Olivia Miles) in the 2026 draft to the Minnesota Lynx, and don’t want a repeat of that scenario.
Diggins didn’t hold back after a 20-point loss to the Toronto Tempo last Sunday.
“We gotta have more maturity and more leadership on and off the floor,” Diggins said. “… If it was just versus one team, I’d understand that, but now it’s been struggles. That’s a trend of ours. It’s disappointing. Really is. It’s frustrating.
“The games ain’t gonna slow down, and teams are gonna keep getting better and better around us, so we gotta figure out how we’re gonna turn this corner here. It’s been an extremely frustrating experience.”
When asked about the Sky’s half-court offense, Diggins deferred the question to coach Tyler Marsh.
Another frustrating season in Chicago
Last year, Reese went through a similar experience while the Sky posted a 10-34 record, which tied the Dallas Wings for the worst in the league. Reese, before she was traded this spring, publicly shared her frustrations with the Sky in September.
“I’m not settling for the same shit we did this year,” Reese told Julia Poe of the Chicago Tribune. “We have to get good players. We have to get great players. That’s a non-negotiable for me.
“I’m willing and wanting to play with the best. And however I can help to get the best here, that’s what I’m going to do this offseason. So it’s going to be very, very important this offseason to make sure we attract the best of the best because we can’t settle for what we have this year.”
Her comments were not well-received by the Sky, and she was benched for half a game against the Las Vegas Aces because of “statements detrimental to the team.” That was Marsh’s first year as the Chicago head coach. Things don’t seem to be going any smoother in his second season.
Ultimately, Reese got traded to the Dream, a team that had a franchise record 30-win season in 2025 and brought that momentum into this year with an 8-3 start.
When Marsh was asked about Diggins’ frustration, he said he understood how she was feeling and wanted to take accountability.
“I think the accountability starts there. Starts with me and ends with me, honestly,” he said. “I understand the frustration. There’s frustration across the board. Nobody’s happy with where we’re at, record-wise or how we’re playing, so I take the hit on that.”
Not the first time Diggins has spoken out
Diggins has a long history of publicly speaking out when something is not right, whether it’s on-the-court issues or lack of support during pregnancy and maternity leave when she was with the Dallas Wings and the Phoenix Mercury.
One notable “locker room” issue happened in 2022 while playing for the Mercury alongside Diana Taurasi, another player known for being unapologetically competitive. During a timeout, Diggins stood up and approached Taurasi. They got into a heated verbal exchange and had to be physically separated by their teammates and coaching staff.
Things were relatively quieter in Seattle from 2024 to 2025, although there were some reports of locker room friction. Last year, there was a postgame press conference where Diggins refused to take any questions, but she apologized during the next press conference and said she has to “be a better leader when it’s hard.”
The situation with the Sky so early in the season is not ideal, but at least one of her new teammates appreciates Diggins’ passion for the game. Natasha Cloud said that although there are no moral victories, she liked the way Chicago came out against Atlanta. She credited Diggins for the “call to action” their team needed.
“I’ll defend my fellow PG here. Skylar is a dog,” Cloud said. “There’s an expectation and standard that she expects to be on the floor and she lit a fire under our ass. And she does that intentionally to try to bring the best out of us.
“… It’s very intentional, and we responded today. We’re not happy with the loss. I’ll never be happy with a loss. I’m a sore ass loser, too. But what we all said in that locker room is, if we play this hard, this consistently, we can fix those seven minutes, those controllable factors for us. … It’s going to take this type of effort, this type of fight, this type of grit every single night.”
