Four years ago, WNBA legend Sue Bird made a bet.
Hours into an Instagram live session with Diana Taurasi, the (hypothetical) stakes were high: Put a million-dollar wager on the best player from the 2020 draft class.
Bird had an immediate answer.
“Chennedy Carter,” she said. “If Chennedy Carter gets her (stuff) straight — I mean, come on, bro.”
The four-time WNBA champion still was reeling from her last meeting with Carter, when the 5-foot-9 guard diced up Team USA as a Texas A&M junior during a November 2019 exhibition. Carter dropped 34 points on the best players in the country, including Bird and Taurasi, to break a 23-year-old scoring record for a college player against the national team.
“We anticipated that Chennedy would be really geeked up and rise up in big moments,” Team USA coach Cheryl Reeve said after the game. “That’s sort of what she does. She relishes these opportunities.”
After taking Carter as her defensive assignment, Bird was more straightforward in her assessment: “You couldn’t guard her. I was like: ‘What the (bleep)? Why the (bleep) am I guarding her?’”
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Bird’s praise made some waves at the time, but it dwindled as Carter’s development was stunted by two haphazard years with the Atlanta Dream — who drafted her with the No. 4 pick in 2020 — and an unexpected waiving by the Los Angeles Sparks in March 2023.
A clip of Bird’s prediction resurfaced on social media over the past week as Carter continues her rapid ascent to lead the Chicago Sky in scoring.
“It’s viral,” Carter said with a grin before scoring 19 points in the Sky’s 78-69 victory against the Dream on Wednesday at Wintrust Arena.
The compliment is nothing new to Carter, who first heard Bird’s assessment of her in 2020 shortly after the livestream.
“And I believed it,” Carter added.
The weight behind that praise hasn’t worn off in the years since. Carter still relishes the memory of that matchup against Team USA, grabbing rebounds and sinking 3s over Olympic gold medalists.
“I just remember being in college and being free,” Carter said. “I know that a lot of people seeing that game was like, ‘OK, she was going off’ — which I was. But I was really just having fun.”
That freedom is something Carter had been chasing throughout her WNBA career — until she landed in Chicago with coach Teresa Weatherspoon.
The connection was instant. Weatherspoon challenged and encouraged Carter in equal turn, elevating her into the starting lineup 13 games into the season and never looking back. Carter has risen to 14th in the WNBA in scoring with 16.6 points per game, slicing apart defenses with her crafty pull-up game and acrobatic finishes at the rim.
“It’s really just Spoon trusting in me and putting me in the right position and not putting a harness on me,” Carter said. “Just letting me play and letting me be free. And it’s opening the court up for everybody, including myself.”
Teresa Weatherspoon on Chennedy Carter: “I coach her hard because I want nothing but greatness from her. … I’m just gonna tell you guys this again — you can write it, print it, do whatever you want to — that’s our All-Star right there.” pic.twitter.com/Ug3QJyKv3Q
— Julia Poe (@byjuliapoe) July 10, 2024
A year ago, it seemed like Bird’s prediction never would come true. After the Dream suspended Carter indefinitely midway through the 2021 season and then traded her to the Sparks that offseason, she started only two games in one frustrating season in Los Angeles before getting waived.
Spending the 2023 season out of the league turned into an opportunity, not a catastrophe.
Carter built workouts focused on turning on-ball creativity into second nature — cycling through handling drills on a grass field with a tennis ball, shutting off the lights in her garage and practicing weaving the ball between cones without the benefit of sight.
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Carter knows she can’t settle for just being quick. Now that teams are attuned to her first step, she wants to add a layer of deceptiveness to her movement, slowing down and speeding up in rapid succession to shake off defenders and open up her teammates.
Weatherspoon noted the key to Carter’s ability to pick apart defenses is a first step that’s both quick and controlled, allowing her to dodge in a different direction whenever a defender overcommits while attempting to keep up.
And it’s this fluidity that gives Weatherspoon confidence in Carter’s offensive creation. If Carter gets her feet into the paint, the Sky are in position to score.
“We don’t place a ceiling on her,” Weatherspoon said. “She’ll just blow right on out of it and keep going.
“It’s a desire every day to want to be better. Even if you play a heck of a game and everybody’s cheering about the game and talking about how great you’re playing, you still want more. That’s how Chennedy Carter thinks.”
Despite a few years’ delay, Bird’s prediction has begun to come true. Carter figured herself out. And measured against the rest of the 2020 draft class, she trails only No. 1 pick Sabrina Ionescu in offensive production.
Four years later, Carter is eager to keep proving Bird right.
“She’s still one of my favorite players to this day,” Carter said. “I’m thankful that she’s able to give me the credit like that on the highest level and people are seeing it.
“Her words are true. In due time. Just keep watching.”