Sky rookie Kamilla Cardoso’s WNBA debut was short-lived.
After taking contact that sent her to the floor in the Sky’s preseason opener Friday against the Lynx in Minneapolis, Cardoso stood up and appeared to shake out her right shoulder. Sky coach Teresa Weatherspoon took her out immediately, and she hasn’t fully participated in practice since.
On Monday evening, the Sky announced Cardoso is out and will be reevaluated in four to six weeks. Such a timeline would put her potential return at June 17, meaning she could miss up to 13 games.
Fellow rookie Brynna Maxwell, meanwhile, has a knee injury and will be reevaluated in three to four weeks.
The Sky haven’t clarified the specifics of either player’s injury. After practice Sunday, Weatherspoon was vague about the status of her injured players.
‘‘They’re working their butts off to get better and get themselves back into it,’’ Weatherspoon said. ‘‘This is a long season. We want to make sure we take care of each player.’’
The Sky didn’t specify whether Maxwell’s injury also occurred against the Lynx. The only available footage of the game was provided via livestream from Lynx season-ticket holder Alli Schneider.
Schneider previously had livestreamed one other preseason game — the Mystics-Lynx matchup last year. She had maybe 80 streamers tune in to her iPhone broadcast for that game.
When she saw there was no option for fans to watch the Sky-Lynx game Friday, she pulled out her iPhone again. But she wasn’t ready to go viral.
‘‘Maybe a couple of hundred people was all I would have expected,’’ Schneider said.
Instead, more than 170,000 viewers were tuned in to her livestream at the final buzzer, and more than 2 million have interacted with her post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
‘‘I was just trying to make sure it was actually on the players because sometimes I would forget to look at the camera,’’ Schneider said.
Her camera skills were enough to spark a change in the WNBA’s preseason streaming schedule. After the outcry from fans that their only option to see Cardoso’s and Angel Reese’s debut was on a social-media livestream, the Sky and WNBA made a change.
The Sky will deploy a streaming crew, featuring announcers Shimmy Gray and Jason Ross Jr., for their preseason game Tuesday against the Liberty at Wintrust Arena. The WNBA also will make the game available on League Pass.
In the case of the Sky-Lynx game, a few options were available but not used:
• The Lynx could have paid for a crew — complete with announcers, directors and videographers — to stream the game. That stream could have been picked up by the WNBA and made available on League Pass.
• The Lynx could have partnered with a network to broadcast the game on TV.
• The WNBA could have sent a crew to the game instead of relying on franchises.
• The Sky could have paid a broadcast crew to travel to Minnesota.
‘‘On the one hand, it shows that they’re willing to listen and that they see the desire to watch these teams,’’ Schneider said of the Sky’s and WNBA’s decision to stream the game Tuesday in the wake of her viral broadcast. ‘‘[But] there’s another part of it that’s like, ‘Oh, so they’ve been capable and just chose not to do it?’ ’’
Last year, the WNBA streamed two preseason games; this year, it originally had planned four streams before adding the game Tuesday. But the league can pay to send a crew to all preseason games and make them available.
‘‘There are more fans and more eyes,’’ Sky guard Dana Evans said. ‘‘Everything is magnified and under a microscope, so we have to make sure that we’re taking advantage of this opportunity.’’
Besides Cardoso and Maxwell, the Sky had four other players listed on their injury report for their game against the Liberty. Diamond DeShields (knee) and Brianna Turner (knee) were listed as probable/available, Isabelle Harrison (knee) as questionable and Taya Reimer (concussion protocol) as out.
