Chatman so excited about Sky’s outlook she can’t sleep

All coaches know that they can’t teach size or leadership.

So, first-year Chicago Sky coach Pokey Chatman should be sleeping well at night knowing that, thanks in part to Monday’s WNBA draft, she has both on her roster.

But she’s not sleeping well.

In fact, Chatman’s often not sleeping at all, and in a funny twist, having that size and leadership is precisely the reason why.

Chatman is actually a little too revved up about her good fortune.

“I was up at 4:30 in the morning today because my mind was racing. I’m so excited,” Chatman said Friday from Russia, where she is finishing her stint as coach of Spartak, a power team that is competing in the Euroleague playoffs. “I can’t wait to get started in Chicago. We’ve got our bookends.”

Bookends in the basketball world (at least Chatman’s) are precious, and sometimes hard to come by.

They represent both ends of the personnel spectrum: point guards and centers, two of the most specialized players on the court because of the physical (size) and intangible (leadership) qualities they are required to bring to the table.

The Sky is already built around 6-foot-6 franchise center Sylvia Fowles, a long and lean all-star who was named first-team all-WNBA for the 2010 season.

With the third pick in Monday’s draft, the Sky further solidified an already talented crop of point guards by selecting Gonzaga’s highly regarded Courtney Vandersloot, who averaged nearly 20 points and 10 assists per game this season.

She’ll compete with second-year guard Epiphanny Prince and longtime veteran Dominique Canty for the other end of those all-important bookends.

Many prognosticators expected the Sky to select 6-foot-6 Amber Harris out of Xavier in an effort to beef up its most glaring weakness: the power forward position. But Chatman couldn’t get past one important word that kept ringing in her head.

“I just kept thinking about ‘bookends,’ ‘bookends,’” said Chatman, who is also the general manager of the Sky. “We loved Amber (Harris). We thought she was a top player in the draft. But when you have a chance to solidify those No. 1 and No. 5 positions, you’ve got to do it because (elite) players in those positions don’t come around as often as the players that you can get to fill in the middle spots…those 2, 3 and 4 players.”

Chatman believes Vandersloot was simply too good to pass on.

“Point guard is a prized position. A lot of people want to play it, but not many people can own it. Courtney owns that position,” Chatman said. “She leads from it in every way. She helps her teammates get better and she can also score and create for herself from that position. We want a point guard who will own her position.”

I suspect that while in Russia, Chatman has realized that Prince is better off owning a different position.

Prince has played for Chatman’s Spartak team for the last six months and has always been a scoring machine. She rolled up more than 100 points in a high school game and dropped in buckets like it was nothing in college at Rutgers.

But Prince entered her rookie season last summer determined to be completely versatile, a guard who could be seamlessly interchanged between the point and shooting guard.

She shared the point guard spot last year with Canty while she learned the ropes and was considered the Sky’s heir apparent there.

But that was before Vandersloot was drafted.

Perhaps Chatman has come to like Prince more at the shooting guard spot, which cleared the way for her to skip on Harris and target Vandersloot with the No. 3 pick.

Canty, one of the most heady veterans in the league, might start early at point, but changes could come quickly if Vandersloot learns the system and progresses as fast as Chatman expects.

With Prince sliding over to shooting guard, that leaves a battle for the two forward spots. The early favorites will be Shameka Christon, who is healthy and hungry after sitting with a serious eye injury last year, hustler Tamera Young and Cathrine Kraayeveld — who is coming off a rough 2010 but has looked good in the off-season.

“It’s so exciting to see how this is all going to come together, to see what all these players are going to bring to training camp,” Chatman said. “We’re going to have a lot of good competition for spots, and that should make us a very good team.”

pbabcock@dailyherald.com