Candace Parker’s Ride to 2021 WNBA Finals Was Hardly Guaranteed

When Candace Parker made the decision to come home to Chicago last January, she sent the Chicago Sky’s Courtney Vandersloot and Allie Quigley a text message:

“We’re right there. We have it right there, like we have it right there and we can realize our dreams.” 

Later that winter, during a dinner with head coach James Wade, she discovered he had built something special. He had built a culture where players genuinely enjoyed playing the game, along with a core that played a free-flowing style, sharing the ball and owning clear roles. 

That was all Parker needed to know. 

She was sold. Fast-forward nine months, and Parker has the Chicago Sky in the WNBA Finals after a dominant 3-1 series upset over the top-seeded Connecticut Sun.

But taking a chance on returning home wasn’t made recklessly. She left one place she made her home in Los Angeles for another that’s always been home in Chicago. 

The biggest questions for Parker entering the season were clear: how her health would be a factor at age 35, and how quickly she could adapt to the Sky’s offensive sets and defensive schemes. The WNBA season is short—especially this year due to the Olympics—and new-look teams don’t have much time to jell and find chemistry. 

But beyond incorporating a new starter, this was Candace Parker. How quickly would teammates learn to trust a famed icon as their leader?

Before the Sky could find any clear chemistry, the injury bug struck. Parker missed a total of nine games to ankle injuries, one of which was particularly nasty and concerning for a veteran still dependent on her agility. 

Let’s be real, though: The Sky were inconsistent during the majority of the regular season and are the most obvious example of a team that peaked at the right time this year. 

They had difficulty winning without Parker on the floor. Her on-off numbers prove how much Chicago relies upon her to anchor the team defensively. After the Finals berth-clinching win, teammate Kahleah Copper called her “an overcommunicator.” Defensively, there’s nothing wrong with that.

Perhaps most ominously, toward the end of the season, they were outwilled by Tina Charles and the Washington Mystics, a team that couldn’t find its way to the playoffs.

But adding Parker solved a huge problem that has seemingly been resolved in these playoffs. The Sky desperately needed a stronger commitment to defense, the elephant in the room since 2019 for a team that was so potent offensively. Parker’s recognition as 2020’s defensive player of the year may have been heavily disputed, but she’s proving again she can be disruptive. 

Reflecting on their first WNBA finals berth since 2014, teammate Vandersloot explained the Parker effect clearly: “We were missing one piece and that was Candace Parker.”

Parker may not be the Sky’s best player, but she is their most important player because of the pressure she’s able to take off Vandersloot. In both 2019 and 2020, Chicago didn’t have a point guard who could come in if defenses began slowing the 32-year-old down. 

Vandersloot says playing with Parker is akin to having another point guard on the floor, someone she can trust with the ball in her hands, a playmaker who can rise to the occasion. 

Parker began her 2021 playoffs a bit shakily, shooting 3-of-9 and 5-of-15 in the first two rounds of single elimination. But against the Sun, she found the rim more, never coming short of double digits in points or shooting less than 50 percent from the field. 

Aside from her scoring, Parker dominated the defensive glass and turned up the playmaking assertiveness in Games 3 and 4. When Vandersloot began to turn the ball over on Wednesday night in the clinching game, Parker stepped in as primary ball-handler. Vandersloot ended with eight turnovers, Parker just one. 

But back to the big picture: The work is not done. 

Parker played in many winning seasons for L.A. but has won only one WNBA championship. That came in 2016 alongside teammates Nneka Ogwumike, Chelsea Gray and Kristi Toliver, when the Sparks beat the Minnesota Lynx in a five-game slugfest. 

Parker has plenty left to prove. It was only two years ago that she was considered the league’s most overrated player by her peers. The act of winning a championship in her home city will certainly be discussed ad nauseam in the lead-up to the Finals, but it’s about more than that. Parker has a chance to deliver a championship to a franchise that has none.

And how’s that overrated narrative going? 

“She’s accomplished everything,” Wade said Wednesday night. “And it’s funny to say, but she’s probably one of the most underrated women’s basketball players of all time. And they are (not) going to measure it by how many championships this player won, but how she’s carried basketball on her back.”