Coach Tyler Marsh realized earlier this month that he doesn’t tell Kamilla Cardoso often enough how proud he is of her.
“It’s been a tough three seasons for her here,” he said of his 25-year-old center. “Having to step into the spotlight of having to produce the way we’ve needed her to is a testament to her and her commitment to this organization.”
Cardoso indeed has dealt with every flavor of chaos since being drafted No. 3 in 2024: a coaching change after her rookie year, season-ending injuries to key teammates, and the trade of fellow 2024 draftee Angel Reese.
Not to mention the persistent sense among fans and analysts that she could be further along by now.
As a lottery pick and a presumed franchise pillar, Cardoso has spent much of her young career measured against what she could become. The concern has been consistency: too many stretches when she disappeared from games, too many nights when the Sky needed more from her.
That’s changing this season.
She has become the Sky’s mainstay, averaging 14.8 points, 8.7 rebounds and 2.4 assists. She’s more efficient around the rim. Her playmaking continues to shine. And with Courtney Vandersloot back, she finally has a point guard who can feed her in the pick-and-roll.
“We needed her to be [a scorer] and she’s really taken that to heart,” Vandersloot told the Sun-Times. “Like ‘We’re gonna give it to you on the block and you gotta find a way to score.’”
So what accounts for Cardoso’s big step forward this season?
Marsh said last month, half jokingly, that she might simply be tired of not getting her due.
There’s some evidence for the snub-fueled theory. She missed out on an All-Star selection despite being the home city’s best bet. And when ESPN ranked its top 50 WNBA players, Cardoso barely made the list at No. 40, behind players like Liberty guard Pauline Astier and Valkyries center Janelle Salaün.
Proving the doubters wrong is part of every athlete’s motivation. But Cardoso never seems particularly consumed by external perception or interested in fighting it. She hardly even argues with referees, despite Marsh’s conviction that she doesn’t get enough calls.
For Cardoso, proving something to herself might be more important.
Though belief in her potential never really wavered within the Sky organization, the question was whether Cardoso believed it herself. She has acknowledged for years she needs to play with more confidence.
“The biggest thing for Mil is you can tell she wants it now,” veteran guard Natasha Cloud said earlier this month. “I don’t know if that was there two years ago. … You’re starting to see her understand that if you don’t go when we’re trying to give you the f—— ball, it’s a disservice to our team.”
Overall, though, no single grandiose explanation accounts for Cardoso’s improvement. She’s just chipped away at it.
She stays after practice to work with her position coach. She gets extra lifts in with the veterans. The talk about wanting to be more aggressive and confident is showing up more consistently in how she plays.
The new roster has helped too.
The 2024 and 2025 groups lacked sufficient talent, and neither gave her ideal conditions to develop offensively. She didn’t have a premier point guard or much space to operate. This year’s roster, even with its injuries, has solved a lot of those problems.
“I think rebuilding without a ‘stretch four’ was really hard for Mil,” Cloud said. “Because having two players playing in the same type of spaces, it made it hard for both of them honestly. With this freeing up for Mil … it could have been an All-Star season if we were winning a little bit more.”
“Whether we’ve been good, whether we’ve been bad, whether the adversity, Kamilla has been solid for us.”
Solid is the perfect word to describe Cardoso’s season. And yet returning to the question of what she could become remains justified.
At 6’7 with unique mobility, she has the physical gifts to overwhelm opponents. Against Phoenix, she set a league record by making 13 consecutive field goals and scored 30 points for the first time in her career. And she’s made her mark without really exploring her outside shot.
The natural questions follow.
What if she let her jumper fly more often? What if her closeouts improved? What if she cut down the silly fouls?
Those questions might eventually determine the difference between very good and great. But they shouldn’t obscure what Cardoso already has become: a consistent, big-league threat.
Plenty of reason, in other words, for her coach to be proud.