It looked like the play was dead. Sky center Kamilla Cardoso had surveyed the floor looking for an open teammate. But now she was without her dribble, smothered by reigning Defensive Player of the Year Alanna Smith, still well outside the paint.
She had a cheat code, though. When you have strides the size of Cardoso’s, the basket is never really that far away.
She ducked under Smith and stepped through for the layup, making it a perfect 6-6 from the field in the first half of the home opener.
Her teammates rushed her at the next stop in play. You could see on their faces that specific “I told you you could do it” kind of joy.
“She was just really aggressive,” veteran center Elizabeth Williams said. “She’s able to dominate when she really turns it on. She’s continued that over the last few games, so it’s great to see.”
“I just think she doesn’t realize how good she actually is and how good she can be,” Rachel Banham added. “When you see glimpses of that, it’s really exciting. We’re like, ‘Girl, you could do this a lot more often.'”
Now coming off three strong performances, Cardoso enters a crucial stretch for the Sky (3-3). The question: Is this the same old Cardoso pattern of inconsistency — flashes of greatness followed by frustrating lulls — or is she really going to, as Banham said, do it a lot more often?
With her rookie contract expiring in 2027, Cardoso is on the clock
Since being drafted No. 3 overall in the highly-anticipated 2024 draft, the Sky have been waiting on Cardoso. Not necessarily for her to arrive — she has arrived, in various emphatic declarations of talent. It’s more that everyone’s been waiting for her to decide to stick around.
The Sky have always envisioned Cardoso on a path to becoming one of the most dominant bigs to ever play the game.
Now, with her rookie contract expiring in 2027, the grace period is over. No more excuses for the 25-year-old. She is finally surrounded by a highly competitive roster and an offensive system tailored to maximize her strengths.
Which is why her start to the season was concerning. After a strong opening performance, she shot a combined 5-for-16 in the next two games. The team’s positive runs tended to coincide with Cardoso on the bench. Williams better protected the rim and stabilized the offense.
Then in Minnesota, something shifted.
When star forward Rickea Jackson went down with a torn ACL, Cardoso responded with renewed hunger — 11 points on 5-for-8 shooting, 12 rebounds, four assists, and three blocks in the surprise win. She stopped floating. She locked in with more physical and active defense.
“I know a lot of people talk about my defense and say I’m not very good at it,” Cardoso told the Sun-Times. “So I took that personally and I’m trying to get better.”
Over the next three games, her performance elevated. She shot 19-for-28 and brought her season stat line to 14.8 points, 9.8 rebounds, two assists and 1.3 blocks per game.
The turnaround was helped by fixes to her technique around the rim. But the biggest change was to her relationship with time. Cardoso realized she has more of it than she thinks.
Time to survey the defense. Time to wait for the right moment to attack.
“Sometimes I tend to rush my shots,” Cardoso said. “I just need to take my time and try to give them a second move. I think sometimes I was turning right into [the defense]. I needed to start giving them a second move and try to step through.”
The patience translated to her passing, too.
“I just got to stay calm and watch the floor and see where the double is coming from,” she said. “And find the open players.”
Small changes. But they made a world of difference. Enough to turn someone who could have been on the trade chopping block by midseason into the kind of player you stick on billboards for years to come. That is, if she can keep it up.
Cardoso’s new habits signal a shift in mindset
How do you know when you’ve broken a pattern? Once it’s established, you’re susceptible to living in fear of it. Even during obvious moments of growth, you worry you’re still in the thick of it.
There is lingering evidence that Cardoso could be stuck. In her last outing against the Lynx, she poured in 17 points but still came up short on layups. Her defensive assignment, Natasha Howard, scored 22 points in the first half alone. Down the stretch, coach Tyler Marsh once again went to Williams to get stops.
Marsh is honest: Cardoso hasn’t yet reached the elite level of play he envisions.
But her coaches and teammates do see a shifting approach.
She is expecting more of herself. She’s been staying late for extra practice and film sessions. She texts Williams to set up shooting workouts, and Williams is always excited to see her name pop up on her phone.
Williams pointed to one particular payoff already: While Cardoso still scores mostly through layups, she’s started using a lefty hook. It’s a move she learned from Williams, one that Williams thinks will be unguardable once Cardoso perfects it.
Maybe the best way out of a pattern is simply to build new ones.
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