Read More

AP

Kahleah Copper finished with a game-high 22 points on 60% shooting and went 2-for-3 from behind the arc. Candace Parker added 13 points and Courtney Vandersloot had four and 11 assists.

Chicago sports fans follow one rule: If you win, we’ll show up.

The Sky, one win away from their first WNBA title after Friday night’s 86-50 win over the Phoenix Mercury, have given the city the type of team it has had few of recently — a potential champion.

“Sky in four” chants erupted in Wintrust Arena as the final 60 seconds ticked by.

Upon their return from Phoenix, the Sky were greeted with posters and banners at their practice facility in Deerfield. In Chicago, City Hall’s lobby was lined with Sky flags, and for the first time, the famous lions outside the Art Institute’s Michigan Avenue entrance were fitted in Sky threads.

Most significant of all the ways the Sky have been embraced over the last week, Wintrust Arena was sold out for Games 3 and 4.

“It’s the atmosphere you dream about as a kid,” Courtney Vandersloot said. “Playing in the WNBA Finals in front of a sold-out arena says [everything].”

Before Game 3 Phoenix coach Sandy Brondello said her team had to shut down Kahleah Copper in the paint and force her to hit from three. Copper did both. She finished with 22 points on 60% shooting and went 2-for-3 from behind the arc.

Candace Parker added 13 points and Vandersloot had four and 11 assists. Every Sky player scored Friday night.

The Sky’s 22-point halftime lead over the Mercury tied the largest halftime lead in a WNBA Finals game. The last time that happened was in Game 1 of the 2014 Finals, when the Sky trailed the Mercury by 22.

The Sky’s 36-point win was the largest margin of victory in the Finals’ history.

Of the nine teams that trailed 2-1 in a best-of-five Finals since the league began playing them in 2005, four have come back to force a Game 5 and win the title. So their series lead doesn’t mean they can relax.

The Sky are going for their first title and the Mercury their fourth, which would tie the Houston Comets and Minnesota Lynx for most in the league. The WNBA has three one-time champions: The Sacramento Monarchs (2005), who folded in 2009, the Indiana Fever (2012) and the Washington Mystics (2019).

What would a title mean to the Sky and Chicago? Parker, who became the fourth player in WNBA history with 1,000 career playoff points Wednesday night, said she can’t put it into words.

To reach that mountaintop, the Sky have to slay the dragon. Not the Mercury, but Diana Taurasi. Friday night, the Sky held Taurasi to just five points on 10% shooting.

Whether or not Taurasi should have been playing Friday night was a question fans were contemplating.

In Game 2 she shoved official Tiara Cruse when Cruse was attempting to separate Copper and Cunningham. Cruse briefly paused when she saw it was Taurasi before allowing her to help Cunningham up. The league announced Thursday that she would not be suspended and instead was fined $2,500.

“To be quite honest she went in to help her teammate,” Brondello said. “I don’t think she saw who was around her. Isn’t that what you teach your players? Someone needs help, you go help them.”

Because of their No. 6 seed, the Sky knew their road to the Finals wasn’t going to be easy. And they knew nothing about this series would be easy, despite the Mercury being seeded fifth.

Friday night, they made things look easy.

They crowded Brittney Griner’s space, holding her to 16 points and just two rebounds, got into passing lanes forcing 12 Mercury turnovers and outscored the Mercury 36-14 in the paint.

With nine minutes left in the game Taurasi, Griner and Skylar Diggins-Smith went to the bench for the night.

The Sky have the potential to secure the Championship Sunday in Game 4 which is slated for 2 p.m. If they play like they did Friday, they will.

Read More

A 16-year-old boy was shot Octover 15, 2021 in Chicago. | Adobe Stock Photo

The boy was sitting inside a vehicle about 7:40 p.m. in the 700 block of North Hamlin Avenue when someone opened fire, police said.

A 16-year-old boy was critically wounded in a shooting Friday in Humboldt Park.

The teen boy was sitting inside a vehicle about 7:40 p.m. in the 700 block of North Hamlin Avenue when someone opened fire, Chicago police said.

He was struck in the face and was taken to Humboldt Park Health Hospital in critical condition, police said.

No arrests were made.

Read More

The Chicago Sky Drumline performs outside the Wintrust Arena, before game 3 of the WNBA finals. Between the cheers and the heckles, fans said their spirit will help the Sky win it all this year. | Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times

Fans on Friday said the atmosphere at Wintrust Arena will be enough to steer the team to a WNBA finals victory. Playing against the Phoenix Mercury, it was the first home game for the team in over a week.

Chicago Sky fans say they’re confident the team is going to win it all this year – and some fans say the victory might belong to them just as much as the team.

“You get the crowd involved, the team hears it, and then the energy just goes up and they play harder,” said die-hard fan Nikki Williams.

The Sky had their first home game in over a week on Friday, and fans at the sold-out Wintrust Arena said they were ready to do their part to help lead the team to a championship.

Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times
Fans packed into sold-out Wintrust Arena on Friday for game 3 of the WNBA finals.

“They’ve struggled for the last couple of seasons, so it’s great to see them be able to pick it up and build a team that they’ve been holding on to and just kind of being patient,” said fan AJ Brown, wearing a black Sky T-shirt.

Sorrell Hayes, a North Side native, says he does his part to help the team win by shouting at the refs and asking them, “Are you blind?” as well as intimidating the away team.

“I heckle the refs, the away team; I don’t care who it is,” said, Hayes, a season ticket holder. “I fall down in the seat, I pass out. It’s like I’m on the court, like I’m the coach. I’m a live wire.”

Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times
Chicago Sky fans say the home game atmosphere is what has helped with the team’s success this year. Fan Lisa Debiasi said the atmosphere has been even better in the playoffs.

Hayes, a man who is “all about basketball,” said Chicago Sky home games carry an electric buzz that can’t be compared with any NBA game.

“Being here is just a different atmosphere,” he said. “To see how the little kids are involved in it – I see little boys play all the time, but the little girls, their hearts are beating, they’re passionate about it.”

Read More

Freshman Rep. Marie Newman, D-Ill., voting on Oct. 7, 2020. | Pat Nabong/Sun-Times, Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

The first-time congresswoman is in a district with GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger. Rep. Bobby Rush also doesn’t like his remapped district, which remains heavily Democratic.

WASHINGTON – The draft Illinois congressional map unveiled Friday – and drawn by state Democrats to create 14 Democratic districts and three Republican – was blasted by freshman Rep. Marie Newman because it leaves her extremely vulnerable to primary and general election challenges.

Democrat Newman was outraged, given the power of the state Democratic mapmakers – Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, and House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, D-Hillside – to draw more favorable lines.

The 17 crazy-shaped districts zigzagging around Illinois were gerrymandered to maximize Democratic voting power.

Nationally, Democrats have been raging against GOP states gerrymandering mainly because there are so few states where Democrats have the sole congressional mapmaking power.

At present, Illinois sends 13 Democrats and 5 Republicans to Congress. Illinois drops to 17 seats because of reapportionment following the 2020 Census. There will continue to be one Hispanic and three Black districts, all on Democratic turf.

The potential three-seat pickup for Democrats in the Illinois remap has enormous national implications. The map presents tough choices for Republican Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Rodney Davis who may run for the U.S. Senate or governor if they determine there is no district they can win.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has only a three-vote margin in the U.S. House, and Illinois is one of a handful of Democratic states that can help Democrats retain the House after the 2022 elections.

On Tuesday, the Sun-Times learned, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the co-chairs of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, will kick off an attack on the Democratic-drawn Illinois map, with more GOP assaults to come.

Democrats did not use all the available partisan firepower, said David Wasserman, one of the nation’s foremost remap experts, who is with “The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter.”

The Illinois proposed map is “both uglier and less effective for Democrats than expected,” he wrote. With some shifts, Democrats could have added more protection for Rep. Lauren Underwood, who barely won a second term in 2020.

According to Wasserman’s analysis Illinois Democrats – who can still revise the map – unwittingly created some potential swing districts rather than safe havens in 2022. “If the political environment goes south for Democrats in 2022, this grotesque gerrymander could turn into a ‘dummymander,'” he wrote.

NEWMAN AND KINZINGER

Democrats pushed Newman’s district west so it sweeps in Kinzinger’s home in Channahon. Kinzinger has a soaring national profile because of his crusade to break former President Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican party. As a target of pro-Trump forces, Kinzinger will face a primary battle no matter when he runs.

Wrote Wasserman, “Considering that the southwest Chicago suburbs are, if anything, trending right, this seat would be a toss up in a favorable midterm climate for the GOP.”

In the new 3rd District, Newman, a progressive from LaGrange, sheds city of Chicago precincts she depended on while pushing her far west.

With more conservative Democratic turf, former Rep. Dan Lipinski, who Newman defeated in a 2020 Democratic primary, told Crain’s Chicago Business he’s mulling a 2022 comeback bid.

Newman said in a statement, the proposed map “is not only retrogressive but substantially diminishes the diverse and progressive voices of Chicago’s Southwest Side and suburbs.”

“I know that IL-03’s constituents will ensure their voices are heard loud and clear at these public hearings over the coming days.”

Kinzinger in his statement signaled he may move on after six terms. “Following the release of the new congressional maps for Illinois, my team and I will spend some time looking them over and reviewing all of the options, including those outside the House.”

DAVIS, LAHOOD, MILLER

Democrats put Davis in a snake-shaped Democratic majority district slithering through Democratic vote-rich university towns in central Illinois. Said Davis in a statement, “As expected, our lying Governor teamed up with state Democrats to draw a shameful, partisan gerrymander in a desperate attempt to keep Nancy Pelosi in power.”

And Democrats tossed in the same GOP district freshman Rep. Mary Miller and Rep. Darin LaHood, setting up a potential primary.

BOBBY RUSH

Rep. Bobby Rush, with one of the most Democratic districts, does not like the turf he’s getting, calling the map “an absolute nonstarter” and “a horrendous map” that “does not take into consideration cultural affinities. It begins at a place called absurd, and it ends at a place called ridiculous. The best thing about this map is that my southern boundaries are not in Iowa.”

Read More

Kierra Moore, who played for the girls’ basketball team at Michele Clark Academic Prep Magnet High School, was shot and killed Thursday in Chicago. | Provided photo

Moore was with a group of people in the 3100 block of West Polk Street when someone in a black sedan opened fire, killing her.

As a young child, Kierra Moore was so drawn to basketball that she insisted on playing with the older kids.

“She’d come to her older brother’s practice and say, ‘I want to play.’ And I’d say you’re not old enough,” said Arlena Wade, who coached the brother and would go on to coach Moore at Michele Clark Academic Prep Magnet High School.

“I’m playing! I’m playing!” Moore would say, according to Wade. “She did that until she was old enough to play.”

Born and raised in Cabrini Green, Moore showed incredible promise. “She was destined to go to the WNBA,” her older brother Jaden Knox said Friday.

The 16-year-old was shot and killed Thursday night while standing with a group of people in Lawndale. Police said the gunfire came from a passing black car around 11:30 p.m. in the 3100 block of West Polk Street.

Moore was hit several times and died at Mount Sinai Hospital. Police have reported no arrests.

Her brother remembered Moore Friday as “a fun-loving, joking person” who was inseparable from her twin sister.

“She loved her twin more than anything,” Knox said. “They did everything together. Never once were they separated, unless she was with me.”

After Cabrini Green was torn down, Moore’s family moved to row houses nearby where she’d play one-on-one games with her brother at the courts.

“She could do things I couldn’t — right- and left-handed,” Knox said. “She was my right-hand man. We would play video games together, basketball games. I taught her the ways of the game.”

Between trips with her brother downtown for gym shoes, she’d talk about basketball, her team at Clark and her schooling. “She loved Michele Clark. She was always like, ‘I want to go to school, I can’t wait to play basketball,” her brother said.

Provided photo
Kierra Moore (second from right), coach Arlena Wade (far right) and teammates from the Michele Clark Academic Prep Magnet High School girls’ basketball team.

“She always told me she wanted to take her team to at least one championship. This year was supposed to be the year she’d take her team to the championship,” he said. “I told her, you already know I’m coming to every single last one of your games.”

Wade, the head coach at Clark, called Moore “the life of the team… a great player” who averaged about 15 points a game.

A captain of her high school team, Moore was a jokester but was also intense about playing — whether it was over a bad call or what jersey number she wore. A teammate still remembers when a ref called a foul on Kierra. “She got mad and fussy with the ref,” Tajiuna Cooper said. “She always got her way.”

Moore’s energy motivated the team and bound them together, Cooper said. “She wasn’t just a teammate but family.”

While Moore had a hard exterior, she was “soft on the inside,” agreed Assistant Coach Sayisha Pendleton.

“No matter how tough she seemed, she was gentle giant,” Pendleton said. “She couldn’t live without her team and they couldn’t live without her. She was a big piece of the basketball team.”

Moore’s brother said he will always remember his sister’s “smile of gold.”

“When the team was down, she brought them up,” Knox said. “Everybody loved her.”

Read More

Chicago police investigate after a 14-year-old girl and a security guard were both shot outside Wendell Phillips Academy High School in Bronzeville on Oct. 12. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

The hard truth is, if there was a legal magic wand that could be waved to immediately solve the nation’s violence problem, it would’ve already been waved years ago.

Catholic priest and Chicago community activist Michael Pfleger has now twice called on Gov. J.B. Pritzker to declare a “state of emergency” over his city’s notorious gun violence problems.

The first time was this past July, when Pfleger demanded Pritzker issue a similar emergency declaration to the one announced by New York’s then-governor, Andrew Cuomo. Pfleger repeated his demand again last week after a security guard and a little girl were injured by gunfire outside of a school.

The Democrat Cuomo issued his emergency declaration about a month before he finally resigned his office in disgrace. A chorus was building against him for a variety of reasons, including numerous sexual harassment claims. His emergency declaration was seen by some at the time as a way to distract from the growing calls for his immediate ouster.

As far as the substance goes, there wasn’t much in former Gov. Cuomo’s declaration that the state of Illinois isn’t already doing.

Cuomo unilaterally increased spending on violence interruption and youth job programs, which Illinois did in its current fiscal year’s budget.

Cuomo’s declaration also created a new Office of Gun Violence Prevention, but the Illinois Legislature has already done that here.

Cuomo created a gun trafficking interdiction program to stem the flow of guns from other states, but that’s already being done here, too.

Cuomo was criticized by New York Republicans for not also rolling back some of the state’s criminal justice reforms passed two years earlier, but Illinois’ reforms haven’t even taken effect yet, so they aren’t contributing to the problem, no matter what some ill-informed blowhards might be saying.

Look, the hard truth is, if there was a legal magic wand that could be waved to immediately solve the nation’s violence problem, it would’ve already been waved years ago.

Even so, the Chicago news media has long been notorious for amplifying mostly empty but very loud calls to “Do something right now!” about violence. Mayors Richard M. Daley, Rahm Emanuel and now Lori Lightfoot have all been pilloried for failing to adequately address the city’s violence problems. Remember when another disgraced governor, Rod Blagojevich, threatened to call out the Illinois National Guard over Mayor Daley’s opposition? Blago got a ton of news media coverage for that, which, like Cuomos, is what his threat was really all about.

One thing deserving attention is a better understanding of what’s actually going on.

For instance, we are told over and over that gun violence in our cities is a gang problem. But a study conducted this year of Chicago police incident data for 34,000 shootings during the past decade found that detectives “labeled fewer than three in 10 of them gang-related,” according to The Trace. In 2020, the city’s police department claimed 43 percent of fatal shootings were gang-related, down from 70 percent five years earlier. But that police data is probably unreliable, so we don’t really know.

There are surely other things that can be done which are working elsewhere. And the current violent surge began with the COVID-19 pandemic, so it might eventually subside on its own once (hopefully) the pandemic finally recedes.

Some things take time. You can’t snap your fingers and bring back factories to the inner cities, or get rid of guns, or force people to trust the police and stop fearing neighborhood killers.

In the meantime, it wouldn’t kill the governor to be more aggressive in informing the public of what the state has done so far and what can be done in the future. He often tries to distance himself from local crime problems to the point where he comes off as uninvolved or uninterested.

Pritzker has done some good things, including vastly expanding violence interruption and prevention programs, but even then the money spent to treat violence like a public health issue is a relative drop in the bucket of what’s likely needed.

More funding for mental health programs is a no-brainer. This country’s track record on dealing with mentally ill people is beyond shameful. Schools should have counselors. Neighborhoods should have clinics with easy access. Police, nurses, doctors and so many others should get all the help they need so they can better deal with the devastation they engage with every day.

This stuff isn’t free, obviously. Magic wands are free, but they don’t exist. Make the case for more spending on real solutions and move the state forward.

Send letters to [email protected].

Read More

A new documentary looks back at the famous Rush Street venue — but you really had to be there.Read More

Read More

A member of the Chicago Teachers Union wears a sticker after getting vaccinated at Weiss Memorial Hospital on Feb. 15, 2021. | Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Even as health care workers struggle to care for patients — unquestionably a science-based endeavor–some of them are refusing a free treatment that overwhelmingly prevents hospitalization and death.

We have finally entered the Twilight Zone.

Governors are defying public health rules issued by the president and federal agencies. They are punishing school districts that are trying to protect their students and employees. They are threatening private companies that are trying to keep their businesses going by protecting their workforce.

SEND LETTERS TO: [email protected]. Please include your neighborhood or hometown and a phone number for verification purposes. Letters should be approximately 350 words or less.

Even as health care workers struggle to care for patients — unquestionably a science-based endeavor–some of them are refusing a free treatment that overwhelmingly prevents hospitalization and death caused by a disease destined to kill at least three quarters of a million Americans.

And television personalities who are required to be vaccinated turn around and disseminate inaccurate information (to put it generously), just as Republican politicians consistently undermine vaccination efforts and inflame people’s doubts about safety.

It’s as if they were all fighting on the side of COVID.

What hope do we have?

Michael Hart, West Ridge

Police officers should decide on vaccines

My wife is a Chicago police officer. She is a dedicated public servant. She has and will continue to run toward the gunfire. She has and will continue to run toward the danger if there is a chance to save others.

My wife and I, after much research and discussion, have chosen not to be vaccinated at this time. Our decision is based in part on her serious allergies. Also, in part, because we lead healthy lifestyles. But now this decision, reached by two consenting adults within the marriage bond, is threatened for one of us. Mayor Lori Lightfoot believes she has the right and moral authority to override our well researched, well thought-out and critically reasoned decision and force my wife to submit to this shot.

My wife is not to have any say over what will be done to her physical person. I hope her union and fellow officers stand strong against this unconscionable and dictatorial abuse of power.

Robert R. Johnson, Mt. Greenwood

Serve and protect whom?

“We serve and protect” is the motto of the Chicago Police Department. But who does their union claim to serve and protect, given that they have chosen to spread COVID-19 among the citizens of Chicago by defying a common-sense requirement to get vaccinated?

Vaccinations protect the person who is vaccinated. And each person who avoids infection is one less opportunity for the virus to mutate into a more deadly variant, and it means one less carrier to infect several other people.

Please guys, try not to kill the citizens of Chicago.

Mike Foss Redwood City, California

Schools and vaccine confusion

I wish Mayor Lori Lightfoot was selling her car. She has proved once again that she is a terrible negotiator. And the Chicago Teachers Union has once again proved that they are no better than dishonest car salespeople, talking out of both sides of their mouths.

Sometimes the CTU complains about the lax COVID-19 policies in Chicago’s public schools. Then, on Wednesday, they encouraged the mayor to continue to allow unvaccinated teachers and CPS employees to work, in person and paid, after her vaccine deadline. What is the point to a vaccine mandate if you don’t follow through with the consequences?

I’m not fooled by the CPS/CTU “statistic” that 85% of employees at CPS are vaccinated. That’s everyone within CPS. More than 1,500 teachers, as I write this, remain unvaccinated. Those teachers mingle for many hours, in close contact, with unvaccinated children.

Children until the age of 12 can’t legally get a vaccine, but adults can. They must face harsh consequences for not doing so. Unvaccinated teachers, CPS, the teachers union and Lightfoot are going to drive right off the COVID-19 cliff. Sadly, we’ll go down with them.

Patty Lamberti, Edgebrook

Read More