CHICAGO - Kamilla Cardoso had already matched her career high for points in the opening half when she entered the locker room and checked her phone during the break. A note from Dawn Staley, her former coach at South Carolina, was waiting there.

That moment told the Chicago Sky center it would be a special evening.

Cardoso established a WNBA record for the most field goals without a miss by finishing 13-for-13 en route to 30 points and eight rebounds. It marked only the second 30-point outing in league history by a player shooting 100 percent, alongside Nneka Ogwumike's 12-for-12 performance in 2016.

The Sky cruised to a 124-94 win over the Portland Fire while posting the second-highest point total by a team in regulation in WNBA history.

"She texts me all the time," Cardoso said of Staley. "Just to make me feel confident and to let me know that she's always in my corner."

Confidence can sometimes be a challenge for the 2024 No. 3 pick, but it was not an issue on Friday. Portland had no response as Chicago recorded a league-record 38 assists and shot 66.2 percent from the field. Sydney Taylor added 29 points for her third 25-point game of the season, tying Olivia Miles for the most among rookies. The Sky now own consecutive 100-point games for the third time in franchise history.

"We talked a lot about selflessness the last couple days in terms of our play," Sky coach Tyler Marsh said. "I don't think we have selfish players in that locker room. I think that sometimes the ball can just stick, and people try to make things happen on their own, and we're just not built that way as a team.

"This is what we hoped it would look like from an offensive standpoint."

The positive energy in the arena began well before the Sky started posting historic numbers. The noise level rose inside Wintrust Arena as Courtney Vandersloot stood and headed to the scoring table. Fans were already standing when the buzzer sounded to allow the five-time All-Star to enter the game midway through the first quarter as she clapped powder onto her hands.

The Sky's career leader in points had finally returned from a torn ACL that limited her to seven games in 2025.

With 15 years in the league and 436 regular-season games played, does a two-time champion and five-time All-WNBA selection get nervous returning to the court?

"It feels like first day of school vibes," Vandersloot told ESPN. "Once I was out there, I felt like, OK, this feels familiar. Even if I wasn't out for a year, I would still be nervous. It's just who I am."

Despite the nerves, Vandersloot finished with 10 points and seven assists. The 5-foot-8 point guard had returned to the franchise that drafted her No. 3 in 2011 after two seasons in New York, so the injury was a major disappointment.

She was a starter on the Sky's first championship team in 2021, and the league's No. 2 all-time assists leader won a second title with the Liberty in 2024 before returning to her roots last season. That, however, did not last long.

The organization went through another makeover before the 2026 season, but both parties decided to run it back one more time.

"She was back tonight like she had never left," Marsh said. "You can tell she was back in kind of her happy place. And it took all of about 15 seconds before she was yelling at one of her teammates to get to where they were supposed to be."

Vandersloot added: "The anticipation was the hardest part."

The 37-year-old said the right knee feels fine and that she fully trusts it, but there is some rust. There were flashes of the player fans have grown to love - splitting a pair of defenders for a finger roll layup, a ball-fake to open the lane for a driving floater and finding a cutting Cardoso with a crosscourt pass out of a double team. There were also a few sloppy turnovers that seemed to be a timing or comfort issue.

Marsh had Vandersloot on a minutes restriction, and he now has the challenge of working with three point guards in Vandersloot, Skylar Diggins and Natasha Cloud. Vandersloot came off the bench, and Marsh said he would play Diggins off ball more with the new configuration. There was one stretch where all three guards were on the floor together.

"For the most part, the style stays pretty similar," Marsh said. "She's got a good command of what we want to do and has been slowly integrating herself throughout practices and shootarounds and things of that nature.

"It's just a matter of finding the rotations and the lineups that make sense and kind of are more cohesive together with her back in the lineup."

Every rotation seemed to work for the Sky on Friday as the team set offensive records all over the place.

Bridget Carleton led the Fire with 20 points as the team became the second in WNBA history to allow 100-plus points in three straight road games, joining the 2018 Las Vegas Aces.