Chicago Sky expecting Courtney Vandersloot to help growth of Angel Reese, Kamilla Cardoso

Courtney Vandersloot wanted a seat.

She had just finished a long practice (more than two hours) and then followed that up with a 3-point shooting drill.

If she was going to talk, she wanted to rest her legs. She’s 36 years old and a little sleep-deprived these days, given she and her wife, Allie Quigley, have a month-old daughter.

Vandersloot will need to find moments to get a break this season as she embarks on a return tour with the team that drafted her third in 2011.

The Chicago Sky needs her more than ever as it tries to develop its two young post players, Angel Reese and Kamilla Cardoso.

When Vandersloot, the franchise leader in games, assists and steals, first got here, Sylvia Fowles was the star. Next came Elena Delle Donne. After that, it was a late-career Candace Parker, with whom she won a WNBA title in 2021.

Now the Sky is counting on Reese and Cardoso to power this team into the next phase of the WNBA, a league that is finally ready for its national close-up. (With that in mind, the Sky announced a deal with Covergirl to be the team’s official cosmetics sponsor Thursday.)

Reese exploded on the scene last season, grabbing headlines and rebounds, setting records and starting arguments seemingly every week. Cardoso, after an early injury, showed why the Sky picked her No. 3.

But it was clear what they were missing: a point guard, someone to help guide them on the court. (They also have a new coach in Tyler Marsh.) Now, they have Vandersloot, who has the second-most assists in league history (2,849, fewer than 400 behind Sue Bird) and who has been named first- or second-team All-WNBA five times.

One of the main reasons Vandersloot returned to the Sky after winning a title last year with the superteam New York Liberty is that she and Quigley were starting a family. They had a house in Deerfield and Quigley’s family in the south suburbs.

“We’ve been dreaming about this for so long,” Vandersloot said. “This has always been in the plans, but it was just about finding the time. We are so happy. Over the moon. There’s no better feeling.”

Vandersloot and Quigley played together in Chicago for a decade, eventually leading the Sky to a championship, so this is a change for Vandersloot, having her teammate at home and not on the court. Quigley, who hasn’t played since 2022, is nearby taking care of their baby while Vandersloot plies her trade. Does Quigley miss it?

“Of course she misses it,” Vandersloot said. “She’s the biggest basketball junkie I know.”

Though their daughter, Jana, is growing every day — “She grew out of a couple outfits and I’m just like heartbroken by it” — Vandersloot’s day job is helping those two other young women develop.

“I think all bigs need a point guard, you know,” she said with a laugh. “I was excited about the opportunity. … That’s like a point guard’s dream. It hasn’t been that clean yet, it’s gonna take some time, but yes, that played a big part in it, too. I just saw the potential.”

What does she see in this duo?

“You know, I love playing with a really good rolling post player with good hands, which is Kamilla. And then Angel brings her own sense of dominance in terms of rebounding, and she’s a great screener. She’s a good distributor. So, yeah, we’re trying to figure it out, but it was an exciting thing for me.”

I asked her her thoughts on Reese’s nascent offensive game. We know she can rebound, but she needs to be shooting better than 39.1% from the field. That ticked up to 47% in the Unrivaled season and should go up from there.

“I think she has to find her niche, especially with another post player (in Cardoso),” Vandersloot said. “I think the paint was kind of always hers, and now we have someone else that could dominate in the paint, too. So we’re finding ways for them to play off each other. But I think having her on the perimeter is going to be really good for her career. I think she handles the ball really well, which I didn’t know before I came here. She can pass it very well. So she has a lot of other skill sets other than just rebounding and layups. And I think we’ve got to tap into that.”

Reese’s popularity was both a boon and a burden last year. There was attention for everything she did, good and bad. She’s got NBA-level endorsements and a fan base that transcends basketball. It certainly helped that her rivalry with Caitlin Clark has carried over from college. The Sky’s season opener Saturday afternoon at the Indiana Fever is sure to set WNBA TV records. It’s airing on ABC (2 p.m.).

“It’s a fun time,” said Vandersloot, who played with stars such as Sabrina Ionescu, Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones for her two seasons in New York. “I think that for so many years we’ve been begging to have people follow us because we felt like we always had a great product. But it was so hard to get the fans to follow players from college to the league.

“Now I think they’re doing that. We have a bunch of young, talented superstars, and their fans are coming with them, and it’s really blowing up the league. I think the WNBA is in a really good place, and you know it’s going to only continue to get better.”

The Sky-Fever rivalry was intense on the floor, as it should be, but the online toxicity between Reese and Clark fans, and the media that debated it, was borderline uncomfortable. Were those reactions just a natural result of a league growing in mainstream popularity?

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Vandersloot said. “It was just natural that when you have more eyes on (the league), you have more opinions, you have more people online talking about it and it just kind of comes with the territory. I think we have to be, I don’t want to say accepting, but (accepting) in a healthy way.

“The bad part of it, absolutely not. But a little bit of criticism or whatever, it comes with the territory and we have to be OK with it. The NBA guys, there are whole TV shows dedicated to just talking crap about them and they have to be OK with it. The more people are talking about (the WNBA), the better for us.”

Three years ago around this time, I talked to Vandersloot about her post-playing ambitions and whether she wanted to try coaching in the NBA, as some of her peers had started to do.

“No, I don’t think so,” she said then. “That’s not something I’m interested in. I would more be interested in maybe a front office, GM-type position. But eventually, I would always end up back in the WNBA.”

I wondered whether coming back to the Sky was part of that goal of making the WNBA better from within.

“The Chicago Sky is so important to me, and I just always want them to be in a really good place, making sure that they’re on the right path to championships,” she said. “And I think that we kind of took this team, this franchise, that was always lower in the pack and we just built it over time. … Allie and I really committed to making this a place that players want to play. And so for me, that was a big reason I wanted to come back. I want this always to be a destination for players just because it’s so important to me.”

The Sky is building a new practice facility, but it still practices in a suburban recreation center for now. Things are changing, though. The team is getting more sponsors and selling more tickets. Reese brought her college spotlight with her, and so will rookie guard Hailey Van Lith.

Family and opportunity brought Vandersloot back to Chicago, but she’s not done playing just yet. Winning is on her mind.

“I think we should be a playoff team,” she said. “We should be competitive in this league. We have a lot of great vets surrounded by youth. We’ve got a lot of good weapons. We’ve got to put it together, but we should have high expectations for ourselves because no one is going to expect anything from us.”

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