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Sydney Taylor isn’t surprised by any of this.
While the rest of the WNBA world puzzles over how the Chicago Sky discovered the 25-year-old guard, they’re equally wondering why no one else noticed her.
“The numbers that she’s been putting up since she’s been in our starting lineup, and the efficiency of our offense since she’s been in the starting lineup, it speaks for itself,” Sky head coach Tyler Marsh said. “She’s grown from being just somebody that you have to worry about coming off the bench to now she’s at the top of people’s scouting reports and she’s seeing a ton of attention and still able to produce and put numbers up and so I think that when they’re game planning for for Chicago, it starts with her and Kamilla (Cardoso).”
Taylor, who missed Thursday’s game with a groin injury, is on pace to make the WNBA’s all-rookie squad after going undrafted and spending the past two seasons playing overseas.
She is averaging 14.7 points per game, which leads active Sky players since Rickea Jackson’s season-ending injury, while shooting 45.6% from the floor and dishing out 1.7 assists per contest.
So just how did the Sky discover the undrafted rookie?
Marsh said it was all in the film.
“From her overseas seasons, there was just a natural way that she moved with the ball that we didn’t really understand why no one had really seen her or looked at her,” Marsh said. “Initially we thought she would be great to have in training camp. Obviously, we didn’t know exactly what we had in her, but we knew that she had something to her as she progressed throughout training camp...”
Taylor scored 13.7 points per game with UMass before a grad season at Louisville. She got some interest, but no bites after the 2024 draft. Then, while playing with Kibirkstis Vilnius in Lithuania, she heard from a few teams about joining training camps, but couldn’t leave her European squad midseason. In early February, the Sky told her they might be interested in bringing her over.
So this time, she didn’t re-sign, and after the 2026 draft concluded, she found a training camp contract in her inbox.
“I’ve been at my best for the last couple years now, so just waiting for the right opportunity and giving an opportunity here in Chicago,” Taylor said. “It’s good timing. I had a pretty good season in Poland. Jeff saw me play a little bit, and he was happy with my play. They came, they let me come over here, and I’ve been improving every day.”
Taylor impressed in training camp, and when Marsh and the rest of the coaching staff pulled her aside on the final cutdown day to tell her she made the team, she was a bit surprised. Not because she didn’t think she performed, but because Chicago had so much depth in front of her.
The Sky were ravaged by injuries, though. On May 27, she tallied 27 points off the bench in a high-scoring loss against Toronto. Then she netted 30 on June 11 against Indiana, another shootout where the Sky narrowly fell short.
After that, Taylor was starting. She’s averaging 18.4 points per game since then, including last week’s 29-point performance against Las Vegas that included her game-winning 3-pointer.
“Early on, she was put in position when she was coming off the bench, she was put in positions where it’s like we needed a spark, and she just needed to make something happen,” Marsh said. “The more that her minutes have grown, and the more that her role has grown, she’s done a good job of really identifying where she can fit in without disrupting the flow of everything else.”
With her training camp invite, Taylor wanted to prove herself as a playmaker to get looks from WNBA squads. Her experience at multiple positions, though, has helped her ability to create scoring more than anything.
“(I got better with) playmaking and my versatility because overseas I was playing one through four at times,” she said. “I was playing a little bit of everything. I need to do everything out there as an American. Having that in my back pocket (helped).”
Taylor is making $270,000 this season, the league minimum. She will become a reserved free agent in the offseason and almost certainly be due for a larger pay day.
She’s not worried about that – yet – but instead focusing on how to be more than a one-year wonder.
She’ll keep surprising everyone except herself.
“I knew I did what I had to do to be on the court,” she said. “When they pulled me into the meeting and told me (she made the team), I was shocked, but I wasn’t shocked at all as well… I knew I could be a playmaker on a pretty good team in the W, so that was my goal coming up to camp to prove that.”
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This is my favorite player right now! Taylor can be the best guard in the W easily!