Chennedy Carter enters the 2026 WNBA season as the betting favorite to win Sixth Player of the Year, a sharp turn for a guard who did not play in the league in 2025 and is now trying to make her mark with the Las Vegas Aces. Carter, 27, has +500 odds to take the award, ahead of a field that includes returning standards-setters like Naz Hillmon, last season’s winner, and Tiffany Hayes, who won it in 2024.
The Aces signed Carter this offseason, giving her a fresh start on a roster that is chasing a fourth title in five seasons. Becky Hammon said Carter is in “a great frame of mind” and added, “she just got done cooking people overseas, so we want her to come over here and cook people over here.”
That confidence matters because Carter’s WNBA path has been uneven. She spent 2025 with Wuhan Shengfan in the Women’s Chinese Basketball Association after sitting out the WNBA season, and she arrived in Las Vegas after the Chicago Sky declined to extend her a qualifying offer following the 2024 season. The move left her as a free agent before the Aces brought her in this offseason.
Carter’s talent has never been in question. Her reputation, though, has followed a far bumpier route. In 2021, the Atlanta Dream suspended her indefinitely for conduct detrimental to the team. The next year, the Los Angeles Sparks benched her for poor conduct. In 2023, she went without a team for the entire WNBA campaign before resurfacing with Chicago in 2024.
Her first season with the Sky ended with one of the most replayed plays of that year. On June 1, 2024, Carter shoulder-checked Caitlin Clark to the ground during a game between Chicago and the Indiana Fever. The foul was ruled a flagrant 1, and it became a defining moment in a season that had already been loaded with attention around Carter’s on-court edge.
Now the question is not whether Carter can produce. It is whether she can do it in a way that keeps her on the floor and in the lineup for a team with championship expectations. The Aces are not bringing her in for nostalgia. They are betting that the same aggression that has complicated her career can help them win games in 2026, starting with a run at an award she is suddenly expected to own.
