Chicago Sky head coach Teresa Weatherspoon — who played eight seasons in the WNBA — compared Chennedy Carter to Dallas Mavericks star guard Kyrie Irving.
“She reminds me of a lot of Deanna Nolan and Michelle Edwards,” Weatherspoon said when asked if Carter’s skill set is reminiscent to that of someone she played against or alongside. “If you want to go on the men’s side, take a look at Kyrie Irving.
“This is who I see, but on the men — on the women’s side, it’s a whole lot of Deanna Nolan and Michelle Edwards in there. If you don’t know those two, take a look. Take a look at those two right there — hell of a basketball players. And she has a lot of that in there, but she’s Chennedy Carter. She’s trying to make her own name, and she’s doing a hell of a job of doing what I’m asking her to do, what this team needs of her and just making her name known.”
Carter’s name has been making the rounds on the internet lately after she was involved in an incident with Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark last week.
Following the incident, the 25-year-old inferred that Clark doesn’t bring a whole lot to the table from a basketball standpoint outside of her ability to shoot the ball from 3-point range. Clark was historically productive from deep during her final season of college basketball but has yet to find her stroke since joining the pros, considering she is shooting just 29.7 percent from 3-point range across 11 games played with the Fever.
Weatherspoon made the above comparisons following Chicago’s loss to the New York Liberty — who own an 8-2 record so far in the 2024 WNBA season, the second-best in the Eastern Conference — on Tuesday. But Carter put together one of her best scoring performances of the season thus far in the Sky’s 13-point defeat.
She dropped 16 points (her second-highest point total of the season so far) on 7-of-18 shooting from the field and also contributed three rebounds, two assists and three steals.
Three days prior to her showing against the Liberty, she scored a season-high 19 points while converting all but four of her 12 shots from the floor and every one of her three free throws in a loss to the Fever.
Carter is in her fourth season in the WNBA and first as a member of the Sky after stints with the Atlanta Dream and Los Angeles Sparks. In eight appearances with Chicago so far this season, she is averaging 12.5 points per game on 51.8 percent accuracy from the field to go along with 2.8 rebounds and 2.5 assists per contest.
She has a knack for putting the ball through the hoop just like Irving, who has helped lead the Mavericks to their first NBA Finals appearance since the year 2011 and averaged 25.6 points per game during the 2023-24 NBA regular season.
