The Sky have used the question of whether they are a playoff team all season as motivation.
After being ranked 12th in multiple media outlets preseason power rankings, they referenced that projection whenever it seemed they were gaining momentum. However, with just three games remaining, those projections are not as off base as the Sky wanted to believe.
Friday’s loss to the Lynx moved them into ninth place in league standings, one spot removed from the postseason. The Mystics started the season 0-12. But after winning seven of their last nine games, they surpassed the Sky for eighth place in league standings.
Now, there’s emphasis on a new question: Is making the playoffs really the best move forward for the Sky?
The reason, at one point this season, the Sky needed to make their sixth consecutive postseason appearance was the pick swap with the Wings that hung over them. In 2023, former Sky coach/general manager James Wade made a trade for Marina Mabrey which included giving the Wings the right to swap first round picks in the 2025 draft.
The way pick swaps work allows the team with the rights to the swap — the Wings —an opportunity to trade picks with another team — the Sky — if they end up with better positioning in the draft order. Wade gave the Wings the rights to a pick swap because he wasn’t “[expletive] planning on losing,” he said last February.
However, since making that trade, the Sky have lost a lot. They narrowly made the postseason last year before being swept by the eventual back-to-back title-winning Aces.
This year, the Sky’s one saving grace is that the Wings have a worse record than them.
Had the Wings made the playoffs this year —as many outlets projected they would including the Sun-Times — and the Sky failed to, it would have resulted in the Sky sending them a lottery pick because of that pick swap. With both teams on the outside of the playoff picture, the pick swap may not even come into play at all.
The bottom four teams in the WNBA enter the draft lottery, which is picks one through four in the draft. If the season ends today, the Sparks, Wings, Sky, and Dream are all entering the lottery for a shot at the top pick in the 2025 draft. The lottery odds are determined by each team’s cumulative record over the past two seasons. The team with the worst cumulative record has the best odds to land the No. 1 pick.
Right now, the Sparks have the best odds. However, that’s not a guarantee.
The Sky would have the worst odds at landing the No. 1 pick in the lottery if the season ended today. In the off chance that the Sky were to land the No. 1 pick, the Wings would implement the swap.
This means that the absolute best pick the Sky could end up with in the 2025 WNBA draft is the No. 2 pick. The lottery could also result in the Wings landing a better pick than the Sky in which case they would not implement the swap.
For the Sky, landing the No. 2 pick, any pick in the lottery for that matter, is still a more valuable option than being the eighth seed and getting swept in the first round again. The Sky have failed to fully embrace their rebuilding status over the last two seasons. Despite that, GM Jeff Pagliocca was able to secure two top rookies in Kamilla Cardoso and Angel Reese via the draft as a result of pre-draft trades.
In his moves since he’s made it clear he’s stockpiling draft assets to potentially package in free agency. Landing a lottery pick will either benefit those efforts or lead to another young talent being added to the fold.