Timing is everything, and after 12 seasons with the Sky to begin her career, point guard Courtney Vandersloot needed something new. She had a sense of stagnancy two years ago and was energized by moving to New York and starting fresh with the Liberty.
A lot happened in her two seasons there. She was an All-Star in 2023 for the fifth time and won her second championship last season. In between, she lost her mom to cancer. She also had a baby on the way this spring, and for the complete opposite reason she left the Sky, Vandersloot signed with them in February. She needed to be back in a place that felt familiar.
“I had done this so long, and I needed to push myself outside my comfort zone, which was why I chose New York,” she told the Sun-Times this week. “I didn’t want to plateau. I wanted to expand my game and not get too comfortable.
“Once I did it … I wanted to be back into my comfort zone. I wanted to be somewhere that I had a lot of support and somewhere I felt really good on the floor and off.”
Vandersloot will face the Liberty in the Sky’s home opener Thursday (7 p.m., The U, 670-AM) for the first time since leaving them. While she was reflective about her time with the team and living in Brooklyn, she was preoccupied by getting the Sky on track.
Both teams opened their season Saturday. The Liberty received their championship rings, raised the banner and toppled a strong Aces team, while the Sky got blown out by the Fever. The Fever are good, but the Liberty are better. This won’t be any easier than the Indiana game was.
“There’s a lot of familiarity there, so I know what they’re trying to do, but we’re focused on bouncing back,” Vandersloot said. “It’s the home opener for us, it’s big, and we just got our butts kicked. We have a lot to prove to ourselves.”
She knew it might be like this when she joined the Sky, who drafted key pieces in Angel Reese and Kamilla Cardoso last year but are coming off the second-worst season in their history and rebooting with new coach Tyler Marsh.
Marsh and general manager Jeff Pagliocca targeted Vandersloot in free agency because she brought a lot that the Sky missed in her absence: steadiness, leadership and superb point-guard play, even at 36.
They’ve already seen it pay off. Vandersloot has been an extension of the coaching staff in addition to her role on the court.
She knows how to set up Reese and Cardoso for scoring opportunities and might know the nuances of their positions better than they do given her 15 seasons in the league. Marsh credited her for having “a pulse on all five positions.”
And when the Sky drafted point guard Hailey Van Lith 11th overall this year, Vandersloot became basically a library for her. Vandersloot will take the majority of the playing time, but Van Lith is progressing in her shadow.
“There’s just as much value in sitting behind someone like Courtney Vandersloot as there is in being thrown into the fire in your first season,” Marsh said. “The opportunity to learn and gain that knowledge from a [future] Hall of Famer is something you can’t put a price on.
“To Hailey’s credit, she has soaked in every amount of experience and opportunity and knowledge from Courtney, and Courtney’s been a willing participant in sharing that.”
It’s another challenge for Vandersloot. She has described playing for the Sky again as old and new at the same time. It’s a team that is still trying to climb out of the gutter after Vandersloot and three other starters left after the 2022 season. She has an opportunity to help steer that, and doing so would add another impressive chapter to her legacy.
