The three-team race between the Sky, Dream and Mystics for the eighth and final playoff spot is a revolving door of potential scenarios.
Wednesday night, the Sky once again allowed their advantage in the standings to be threatened with their 89-58 loss to the Mystics. It was their worst loss of the season, dropping them to 6-13 at home and 13-23 overall.
“You don’t ever come to a basketball game thinking, ‘Oh, my energy is not going to be there,’” Kamilla Cardoso said. “We’re competitors. We come here every day and we want to compete and win. I honestly don’t have an answer for you [on why our energy was low], but this was embarrassing.”
Injuries have hindered the Sky all season. The team’s latest losses — Angel Reese is out for the rest of the season and Diamond DeShields is out for an unspecified
timeframe with a right ankle injury — could prove insurmountable. Reese was back on the Sky bench Wednesday after having successful surgery to repair a fractured left wrist in Los Angeles on Tuesday. She will be with the Sky for their final home game on Sunday but will not travel with the team on the road.
Chennedy Carter led the Sky with 16 points. Cardoso added 13 points and eight rebounds and Isabelle Harrison finished with 10 points.
“There’s ways that you can lose,” Sky coach Teresa Weatherspoon said. “But not like this. That’s not who we are.”
The Sky’s three-point game has been a pain point for them all season, but against the Mystics — the team with the second-best three-point shooting percentage in the league — it was exposed further. They shot 1-for-8 from deep while allowing the Mystics to connect on nine of their 23 attempts.
Mystics rookie Aaliyah Edwards had a double-double with 15 points and 10 rebounds. Brittany Sykes added 14 points and former Sky forward Sika Kone finished with 11 points.
“We went over every single play that they ran,” Weatherspoon said. “Every bit of what our defensive schemes are and should be and how we must be better on that side of the ball. We didn’t do that.”
Wednesday’s Sky loss now puts them a game ahead of the Dream and 1.5 games ahead of the Mystics. That might seem like decent footing, but with four games remaining in the schedule, including one against the Dream on the 17th, their advantage is anything but stable.
The Mystics and Dream’s remaining schedule adds to the drama.
In the final week of the regular season the Dream and Mystics will face each other twice. After hosting the Sky next Tuesday, the Dream will close the season against the Liberty. The Mystics meanwhile will face the Liberty and Fever in their final two games of the regular season.
The Sky play the Lynx on the road on Friday, host the Mercury on Sunday, and end the regular season with a two-game road trip against the Dream and, lastly, the Sun on Sept. 19.
“To spiral and let games go like that would be careless,” Harrison said. “That’s not the type of players we are. So, I hate saying short-term memory because you want to fix what’s going on now, but you do. You have to go into the next game and just come out from the start ready to play.”