<p><a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/chicago-sky" target="_blank" >Sky</a> guard Rachel Banham is starting to get ready for the next chapter of her life. Not right at this very moment — she thinks she’s got another year, maybe two, of playing in her — but her body and mind are telling her a transition is coming.</p><p>“Every year you can feel it get a little closer,” she told the Sun-Times before the Sky’s last home game of the season.</p><p>Though imagining life without playing basketball feels weird, she already has an inkling of what it may look like. For starters: She wants to have kids. All her friends have them now, and she’s always loved them.</p><p>And secondly: she wants to coach in the league.</p><p>She got her feet wet as an assistant coach at her alma mater, the University of Minnesota, from 2022-2024. But she’s known pretty much throughout her playing career that coaching was in her future. From the time she entered the W, she found herself sitting in on staff meetings, thinking about the game from a higher level.</p><p>“Film has always fascinated me,” she said. “I love watching basketball. Like a gross amount. It’s just something that I always am thinking about.”</p><p>Banham has been lucky to have some good teachers. She was drafted No. 4 to the Sun in 2016, played for the Lynx from 2020-23 and then returned to the Sun before ultimately getting traded to Chicago.</p><p>As a result, she’s seen some of the best coaches in the WNBA at work: Curt Miller in Connecticut, Cheryl Reeve in Minnesota and Stephanie White the second time around with the Sun.</p><p>All great coaches have virtues they try to embody for their teams. Accountability is the one that most calls to Banham. She was impressed by how well Reeve modeled it, relentlessly pushing her teams to their potential. Once Banham has her own squad, she wants to be “kind of annoying,” in that same way.</p><p>“I’m gonna be like: We’re gonna do it right, and if you do it wrong, we’re doing it again.”</p><p>Sky coach Tyler Marsh has already witnessed Banham model that trait in the two years they’ve been together. To outsiders, she may seem like a goofball — and there’s no doubt she is — but to Marsh, it’s her businesslike approach that’s kept her in the league for more than a decade.</p><p>Last season with the Sky, she made the best of a <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/chicago-sky/2025/07/31/rachel-banham-brings-the-weird-out-of-her-teammates-while-adapts-to-point-guard-role" >rough situation</a>. After point guard Courtney Vandersloot went down with an ACL tear, Banham stepped into the largest role of her career, starting at point guard and averaging a career-high nine points.</p><p>This season, her role diminished. She started the season in a shooting slump and ended up playing fewer than 15 minutes per game.</p><p>But what impresses Marsh is that her approach didn’t change at all. Which isn’t to say Banham hasn’t gotten frustrated.</p><p>The Sky once again missed the playoffs, and Banham never fully found her stroke, shooting her lowest percentage in years.</p><p>“It’s been a really hard season, to be honest,” Banham said. “As much as this stuff sucks, I try to take it as a lesson. I’m learning so many lessons about how I want to coach, how I want to be as a player the following season, how I want to be as a person, and how I approach each day.”</p><p>As one of three veterans headed for free agency, Banham and the Sky must also decide what’s next. She has been a key culture piece, as they call it in the business. But with nine players under contract for next season and two first-round picks in the 2027 draft, only a few roster spots will be available.</p><p>Decisions for another day.</p><p>In the meantime, Banham is looking forward to an offseason gig as a Big Ten Network studio analyst and color commentator.</p><p>A perfect bridge to the next chapter, a great opportunity to put her “gross” amount of film-watching to good use.</p>
Sky veteran Rachel Banham is starting to think about life after basketball 2026
IUSTITIA.BG – Investigations 2009-2026 2026-09-23 00:35:40
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