The Phoenix Mercury’s path to the 2022 playoffs have gone from somewhat likely to incredibly bleak over a matter of days.
Already missing Diana Taurasi for the remainder of the season due to a quad strain officially announced by the team on Monday, Phoenix’s superstar, high-scoring backcourt is now entirely done for the remainder of the regular season.
In a tweet posted on Thursday afternoon, the Mercury said All-Star guard Skylar Diggins-Smith is out for the season as she’ll miss the final two contests due to personal reasons — likely putting the final dagger in the Mercury’s nightmare 2022 season.
The Phoenix Mercury have announced that guard Skylar Diggins-Smith will miss the team’s final two regular season games due to personal reasons. The team intends to sign a replacement player tomorrow and that player will be available to play in Friday’s game.
— Phoenix Mercury (@PhoenixMercury) August 11, 2022
It truly was not supposed to go this way for Phoenix in 2022.
Back on February 3, the Mercury announced a sign-and-trade for 2021 WNBA champion Diamond DeShields, which was immediately followed the next day by Phoenix’s huge signing of Tina Charles.
The two would join the Mercury’s already-existing Big 3 of Skylar Diggins-Smith, Diana Taurasi and Brittney Griner, to create one of the scarier teams in the W in recent memory and a surefire championship contender on paper.
A half a year later, things could not have gone more off script.
Griner, as we all know by now, has been wrongfully detained in Russia for nearly 200 days. Tina Charles and the Mercury had a weird and extremely out-of-nowhere “contract divorce” during the middle of the season. And now the news of Taurasi and Diggins-Smith absences.
The fate of the Mercury’s playoff hopes ride on the athleticism of DeShields, the hot-shooting of Sophie Cunningham and the scoring of Shey Peddy.
Not exactly what Phoenix fans probably had in mind months ago.
The Mercury (+9000 to win the title at Tipico) will have two games left to figure out how to sneak into the postseason.
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