Tag: Chicago Sky

Q&A: Candace Parker talks about her new Title IX documentary, parenthood and equity in sports

Candace Parker’s new documentary debuts the weekend of the men’s Final Four.

Sometimes, one dream leads to another. And sometimes those new dreams are built on the backs of those who came before them.

That’s becoming the life of WNBA superstar Candace Parker. In 14 years as a player with the Los Angeles Sparks and Chicago Sky, she’s more than lived out her dream of being a basketball player — she’s literally one of the all-time greats. Her career accomplishments include two WNBA MVPs, two Olympic gold medals, a defensive player of the year and rookie of the year award, two college national championships, and after helping Chicago win the title last season, two WNBA championships. The list goes on.

But now she’s also a budding star as a studio analyst for Turner Sports, where she signed a multi-year extension in September.

It’s an opportunity she called “a dream.”

It’s also keeping Parker busy this time of year. She’s in the thick of March Madness, covering the NCAA men’s basketball tournament across Turner’s family of networks. This comes a month after she and wife Anna Petrakova welcomed to the world their first child together. In two weeks, she’ll introduce another baby to the world; the very first film from her production company, Baby Hair Productions, in association with Turner Sports and Scout Productions. Titled “37 Words,” the film is a feature-length documentary that will “chronicle and celebrate the societal and cultural impact of Title IX, anchored through the perspective of Parker,” according to a press release.

Oh, and the WNBA season starts in less than two months.

It’s not lost on Parker that her impressive portfolio may not have been possible without the 37 words tucked inside the 1972 education amendments that make up Title IX. The law prevents discrimination on the basis of sex in educational programs and activities. And though there’s still a way to go to create true equity across genders, as highlighted by the discrepancies between the 2021 men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments, there’s no denying progress has been made. That’s the story Parker wants to highlight, she told For The Win in an interview that took place just before the start of this year’s tournaments.

There’s a lot going on in the WNBA’s 2022 Free Agency period, and it’s all so exciting

Tracking the latest WNBA Free Agency news.

News was surprisingly slow throughout the opening week or so of this season’s WNBA Free Agency negotiation period. From January 15th until the 22nd, most of the action revolved around players being re-signed by their current teams, qualifying offers being agreed to and rumors being leaked around who players were meeting with.

But a lot happened last week in the lead-up to February, the first day in which contracts could officially be signed. As you’d expect, the first couple days of February brought a lot of headlines.

Here’s a rundown of all the important signings and expected deals and rumors to this point of the free agency period.

The Sky brought a locker room door reportedly broken by Diana Taurasi to the WNBA championship parade

So much trolling.

This is some serious A-level trolling right here by the Chicago Sky.

The WNBA franchise is celebrating a championship on Tuesday, and there’s a broken door present at the parade.

What’s the meaning of that? Let’s go back to Sunday: Phoenix Mercury superstar Diana Taurasi reportedly broke the door to the visiting locker room out of anger after losing the series.

So, yes: It appears that’s the door that’s making an appearance at the parade, per Bally Sports’ (and former For The Win writer) Maggie Hendricks.

I mean, does it get any better than that? Check out the photo below:

Amazing.

[vertical-gallery id=1172151]

Former Duck Ruthy Hebard becomes WNBA champion with Chicago Sky

Ruthy gets a ring! Oregon favorite Ruthy Hebard was part of the WNBA Finals winning Chicago Sky, defeating the Phoenix Mercury in Game 4 on Sunday.

A championship for Chicago is a championship for all of Eugene.

That’s how it felt on Sunday afternoon when the Chicago Sky beat the Phoenix Mercury in Game 4 of the WNBA Finals, securing their first championship in franchise history.

As a part of the team, Ruthy Hebard became the first former Oregon Duck from the historic 2017-2020 run to get a ring at the next level. The Sky drafted Hebard with the 8th overall pick in 2020.

Hebard had a limited role in the championship run, playing just three minutes per game, but her young career in the WNBA is off to a hot start with the ultimate goal achieved in just her second season. For the year, Hebard averaged 6 points and 4 rebounds per game.

The Sky was led by superstar Candice Parker, Allie Quigley, and Kahleah Cooper, who was eventually named Finals MVP after averaging 17 points and 5.5 rebounds per game.

[listicle id=10423]

Candace Parker’s emotional moment with her daughter after winning WNBA title was so awesome

What a moment for Candace Parker and her daughter.

Candace Parker closed out her first season with her hometown team in style on Sunday as she helped lead the Chicago Sky to their first WNBA title in franchise history with a 80-74 victory over the Phoenix Mercury on Sunday.

Allie Quigley scored 26 points to lead Chicago while Parker had 16 points, 13 rebounds and five assists for Sky, who won the series 3-1.

Parker was emotional down the stretch and could be seen tearing up in the final 10 seconds as the home crowd went nuts and started celebrating. This video right here is pretty darn cool and shows just how much this meant to Parker:

But this moment after the game was even better, as Parker found her daughter, Lailaa, and the two celebrated the win:

Twitter loved it:

The WNBA Finals are Kahleah Copper’s big breakout moment and it’s been so awesome to watch

Copper. Has. Arrived.

If I told you months ago that we’d have a WNBA Finals featuring Candace Parker, Courtney Vandersloot, Brittney Griner, Diana Taurasi, Skylar Diggins-Smith and Allie Quigley, you’d probably be pumped.

You’d also probably assume that one of those six names would be a shoe-in for Finals MVP by the time all was said and done. And you’d probably assume specifically it was either Parker, Taurasi or Griner — those are the biggest names in the series at this point.

Those assumptions would be completely wrong. As good as those big names have been in this one so far, none of them have quite stolen the spotlight of the series.

Instead, this has been Kahleah Copper’s WNBA Finals. And she’s showed out in every moment of it.

She led the Chicago Sky to an overwhelming 86-50 victory over the Mercury. Chicago leads the series 2-1 and is just one win away from winning its first championship in franchise history.

Copper dominated the entire way in game 3. She had 20 points at the half. The entire Mercury squad had 24.

She’s not even close to being the biggest player on the court. Yet, somehow, she absolutely dominated the paint.

She just dominated. This isn’t new, though. She’s been doing this the entire series. She’s averaged 19.3 points, 6.7 rebounds, 1.3 steals and 1.3 assists through the Finals so far while shooting 54 percent from the field and 57 percent from deep.

That’s Finals MVP basketball right there. Not many folks would’ve called this. But…Candace Parker did. At the beginning of the season, per Just Women’s Sports.

Before the Finals started, Parker talked about how the Sky feed off Copper’s energy and how infectious it was.

“We feed off her energy, and I saw that early in training camp. I have always played against her and she was always really hard to guard, but to be able to see it up close and personal in training camp, I was like wow, she can be something really crazy and she’s already a really good player.” 

Here we are, months later, seeing it all come to fruition. It’s been pretty incredible to watch on the absolute biggest stage possible.

Kahleah Copper is a star. She has arrived. And now she’s one win away from being a WNBA champion. We’ll see if she can push the Sky over the hump one more time.

Watch our sneaker unboxing series, Special Delivery

Justin Fields among Bears at Friday’s Chicago Sky WNBA Finals game

Bears rookie Justin Fields hasn’t been in Chicago for too long, but he’s already embracing the city and showing his support for other teams.

Bears rookie Justin Fields hasn’t been in Chicago for too long, but he’s already embracing the city and showing his support for other Chicago teams.

Fields has made appearances at Cubs and White Sox games, along with being spotted donning hats for most Chicago sports teams, and it’s hard not to love Fields even more as he shares his pride for Chicago sports.

The Chicago Sky are hosting the Phoenix Mercury for Game 3 of the WNBA Finals, where they’re looking to take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five series.

Fields was spotted courtside Friday with some Bears teammates, including linebacker Roquan Smith and wide receivers Darnell Mooney and Marquise Goodwin.

There’s been plenty of excitement for Chicago sports over the last couple of weeks. From the Bears gaining momentum to the Sky in the WNBA finals to the White Sox in the ALDS, it’s been a good time to be a Chicago sports fan.

Fields and the Bears can add to the excitement with an upset win over the hated rival Packers Sunday at Soldier Field.

[listicle id=485763]

Watch: Skylar Diggins-Smith helps even up WNBA Finals

Skylar called game.

Skylar Diggins-Smith is no stranger to getting to the biggest stages in basketball.

At Notre Dame she helped lead the Irish to three Final Four appearances and played in two NCAA Championship games and she’s played in helped Team USA win gold in the summer Olympics.

Diggins-Smith now stars for the Phoenix Mercury of the WNBA who are playing in the league finals.  Trailing Chicago 1-0 in the series, the Mercury were in overtime in a game two they desperately needed to win.  Leading by three late in overtime Diggins-Smith put the game on ice.

With the series now even at one the teams head to Chicago for games three and four in the best-of-five.  Game three takes place Friday night.

Related:  The best still images of Skylar Diggins-Smith at Notre Dame

Candace Parker gave an emotional shoutout to Pat Summit after leading the Chicago Sky to the WNBA Finals

I’m not crying, you’re crying.

For the first time since 2014 the Chicago Sky are heading back to the WNBA Finals.

They beat the Connecticut Sun — WNBA’s #1 overall seed — in four games to advance through the semis. Parker, obviously, was a huge part of that run.

Eight months ago we found out Candace Parker was leaving the Los Angeles Sparks — the only team she’d ever played for in the WNBA — for her hometown Chicago Sky.

Eight months later, here she is going to the Finals with her new team.

She was asked about that journey after the game and talked about the ups and the downs the team had been through with injuries all season long.

But she didn’t really get emotional until she started talking about her former coach, Pat Summitt.

The former Tennessee Volunteers coach passed away in 2016. Parker said everything she does on the court is in her honor and visibly got choked up during the postgame interview.

“This team is special. We’ve battled through adversity; we believed in each other. I want to always bring honor to Pat [Summitt]. In these moments, I always remember her.” 

What a moment. Summitt would certainly be proud of Parker in this moment doing what she’s doing for her hometown.

She’s still got another step to take, though. The Finals are waiting. We’ll see how things turn out.

Watch our sneaker unboxing series, Special Delivery 

Candace Parker was really getting buckets on Inside the NBA

Candace Parker looks like she’s ready for the WNBA season

We’ve known for a long time that Candace Parker is one of the very best basketball players in the world.

We also now know that she’s also one of the best basketball analysts in the world, too, from the work that she’s been doing on NBA on TNT over the last few seasons.

But on Tuesday’s episode of Inside the NBA, she combined the two. She was straight up getting buckets on the set like it was nothing. The Sky forward and reigning Defensive Player of the Year drained five straight 3-pointers while on the set.

It was incredible to watch. All net. No rim.

Watching this, I’m pretty confident in saying that Parker is the best shooter on the Inside the NBA team. And it probably isn’t close.

Afterwards, on Twitter, she gave a shoutout to the Chicago Sky fans.

Chicago, it looks like you’re in for a real treat this season.

Watch our new sneaker unboxing video, Special Delivery

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTAg-hhL1Mw&t=208s