Point guard Skylar Diggins slammed the Chicago Sky coaching staff for an apparent benching ahead of Tuesday’s road game against the Phoenix Mercury.
“Now I’m coming off the bench??????” Diggins wrote in an Instagram story, followed by a thumbs-up emoji. “Cool.”
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Diggins followed that post with a video story captioned “To whom it may concern.”
“And the crazy part about it all is that I’ve been so quiet,” Diggins said in the video. “I’ve been so good and quiet. I’ve been so good and quiet.”
She is averaging 14.2 points and 4.9 assists per game and had a team-leading 19 points in the overtime loss to the Las Vegas Aces on Friday.
As the Sky slip further toward the bottom of the league rankings with a 6-14 record, the front office is facing a familiar fallout with a disgruntled star. The Sky knew they needed to rehabilitate their image throughout the WNBA after years of organizational disrepair caused the exit of star players, from Kahleah Copper to Sylvia Fowles.
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Diggins came to Chicago with her own reputation as a veteran known for voicing her opinions, at times to the detriment of her standing with front offices. In Chicago, Sky leadership embraced Diggins’ identity as a tough leader who could push her teammates to a higher level.
“I don’t want to deal with Skylar Diggins every night if she doesn’t have players she can go to war with, right?” general manager Jeff Pagliocca said with a laugh during the guard’s introductory news conference in April.
Diggins previously sparked concern when she criticized the Sky for their “loser mentality” after a blowout loss to the Toronto Tempo in June. In that same postgame news conference, Diggins redirected questions about team tactics to head coach Tyler Marsh.
Although the guard took a harsh tone, teammates like Natasha Cloud defended Diggins in the days after that loss, noting that the guard’s approach helped to “light a fire” under the locker room amid a losing skid.
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“That’s what you get with a veteran locker room,” Marsh said in June. “There’s obviously a common ground in terms of where we feel like we’re at as a team and where we all want to go and be, but you want that level of competitiveness. You want that passion. You want that toughness. You want that intensity. It keeps a level of urgency amongst everyone.”
The Sky were always due for a backcourt conundrum after veteran point guard Courtney Vandersloot returned from an ACL injury last week. This roster includes three point guards: Vandersloot, Diggins and Cloud. All three of those players are age 34 or older.
Marsh previously noted the need to decrease Diggins’ playing time to help physically preserve the veteran in the latter half of the season. At 35, Diggins has shouldered the heaviest workload on the roster, averaging 29.1 minutes per game.
It’s unclear whether the guard’s position is being adjusted for this reason — or whether she will come off the bench at all. Tuesday’s game will begin to provide more answers as the Sky attempt to dig themselves out of another lost season.
