How the Chicago Sky gifted Olivia Miles to the Lynx and changed an era of WNBA basketball

The Minnesota Lynx should not have been able to draft Olivia Miles.

The WNBA's best team had the opportunity to draft Miles with the second overall pick in April's draft -- and as a result, it has benefitted from one of the most one-sided trades in the league's 30-year history.

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This isn't just a case of recency bias, though it would be easy to declare it as such after Miles dropped a 32-8-8 line in a 105-102 win over the Seattle Storm on Monday night. 

The groundwork to bring Miles to Minnesota began long before the 2026 draft.

Shortly before the 2024 WNBA Draft, the Lynx made a trade with the Chicago Sky.

In that deal, the Sky acquired the seventh overall pick in the 2024 draft; Chicago used that selection to draft eventual All-Star Angel Reese, whom the Sky traded to the Atlanta Dream before the 2026 season.

The Lynx acquired the eighth overall pick in the 2024 draft and used it to take Alissa Pili, but that wasn't all Minnesota received.

In addition to a second-round pick in the 2025 draft, the Lynx won the right to swap first-round picks with the Sky in 2026. After Chicago finished 10-34 in the 2025 season, the Sky would have been in line to pick second overall in 2026 and have control of the board after Azzi Fudd went first overall.

But the Sky had relinquished the right to that selection outright in a 2025 trade with the Lynx, a deal which netted Chicago the 11th overall pick in that year's draft. The Sky used that selection on Hailey Van Lith, who was waived a year later.

That allowed Minnesota to enter the lottery ahead of the 2026 draft, even after finishing with the league's best record in 2025. And it allowed Miles to end up with the Lynx in a generation-defining mistake from the Sky --  the repercussions of which are going to be felt around the WNBA for years to come.

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