“I just want to show people that I belong.”
That was Chennedy Carter’s goal heading into the 2024 Chicago Sky season on a training camp contract, her first season back in the WNBA since 2022. Fans saw the first flashes of “Hollywood” in the preseason with Carter coming off the bench and lighting up the floor with her quick feet and cutting handles that would put defenders on their backs.
Carter gained that speed starting at a young age by training with her father. They did some unique drills and workouts, starting with dribbling a tennis ball in the grass. That was then elevated to a volleyball. Then it was those drills done in the dark in the garage to work on the hand-eye coordination, some of the same drills she still does now in the pros.
“Working on cone drills, working on my footwork,” Carter said. “My feet and my ball handling have to be in sync at the same time. That’s something I work on in the dark. In the garage, I turn the lights off, go through cone drills. Those all help footwork and coordination so just little drills like that to keep my performance high.”
As she moved up and eventually played at the Division-I level at Texas A&M, Carter’s explosiveness shined in 2019 when the Aggies played Team USA in an exhibition match before the start of the NCAAW season. The starting guard decked out in hot pink shoes and played sick, but she still managed to put up 34 points – breaking a 23-year old record of most points scored by a collegiate student-athlete against the U.S. National Team – with 20 coming in the first half.
Sue Bird, a member of that U.S. National Team, spoke in 2020 about Carter’s performance on Instagram Live in a now re-circulating clip where Bird said that Carter would be the best player coming out of the 2020 WNBA Draft.
“You couldn’t guard her. Vicki Johnson was like ‘Take [guarding Chennedy Carter] as a compliment.’ And I looked at [Diana Taurasi and Seimone Augustus] and said, ‘No they should take it as an insult,’” Bird said.
That drive and work ethic from the beginning earned her the nickname of “Hollywood” from her friends. All that hard work pushed her to her version of Hollywood: the WNBA.
Flash forward to 2024 with Carter on the Sky, and she’s matching or breaking all of her career highs across the board in multiple statistical categories. She initially came off the bench and brought that spark offensively the Sky needed to start the season. She jumped up the statistical leaderboards, leading all bench players in points per game to start the season. She still sits at No. 4 among WNBA bench players with her average of 12.9 ppg over the first 12 games.
As the Sky hit a lull offensively, head coach Teresa Weatherspoon made the call to have Carter enter the starting rotation to replace Diamond DeShields on June 16. “Hollywood” immediately made an impact early, scoring 8 of her 18 total points in the first quarter in the Sky’s 91-83 loss to the Indiana Fever.
“I think I’ve always been a starter,” Carter said. “That’s always something that’s in my game. I came into the WNBA starting. It’s really just Spoon trusting me and putting me in the right positions and not putting a harness on me. Just letting me play and letting me be free and it’s opening the court up for everybody, including myself.”
Since entering into the starting role, the Sky went .500 over 12 games and averaged 22.8 points in the opening frame. Those 22.8 first quarter points are second best in the WNBA. Carter is contributing an average of 7.8 points in the first quarter – a league best. Carter is averaging over 20 points a game since entering the starting rotation, putting her at No. 4 amongst all starters in the WNBA.
Carter’s ability to accept whatever role she’s been given has made her an All-Star in Weatherspoon’s eyes.
“The one thing about Chennedy is she’s coachable,” Weatherspoon said. “That’s why you see what you see. I coach Chennedy hard. I coach her extremely hard, because I can. She responds to it, because she knows I’m not asking her to do something that she can’t do.
“This is a guard that can do anything. She does whatever she wants to out there and it’s hard to stop it. So I coach her hard, because I want nothing but greatness from her every night. That’s our All-Star right there.”
Having support from head coaches hasn’t always been a part of Carter’s basketball journey, but Weatherspoon’s presence on the sideline – matching the energy Carter brings on the hardwood – has led to the guard’s career-setting success in the first half of the season.
“I’ve been in situations where I haven’t always been valued. Coaches haven’t always had my back. She has my back on and off the floor and that brings out the best side of me,” Carter said after the Sky’s 78-69 win over the Atlanta Dream. “That brings out me as a person. Everyone’s getting to know me.
“I love my teammates. I love being here. We’re building something special and I’m so thankful to be a part of something like this. 2 years coming, I’m really thankful to be a part of something like this. I was literally crying in the car yesterday like ‘God, I appreciate you so much for putting me where I belong.’”
As the Sky enter into the second half of the season, Carter has just one message: “Don’t sleep on me.”
