Who Ambushed Chennedy Carter And The Chicago Sky?

WASHINGTON, DC – Earlier this week, Angel Reese took to X to highlight an incident that happened outside their Washington, DC hotel when their bus arrived ahead of their game against the Washington Mystics. 

What later ensued was a flurry of concern on X from players, journalists, and fans – were things truly getting out of control in the Caitlin Clark and Chennedy Carter discourse? 

Even if you don’t watch basketball, I’m sure you’ve seen the now viral play where Chennedy Carter fouled Caitlin Clark during an inbounds play. Some fans and outsiders believe it was unwarranted, while others watching the game saw the two guards jawing back and forth during the play before. Since then, Carter and Clark both have been subject to memes, GIFS, segments on national sports shows and talk shows and now, potentially, harassment in public.

Chennedy has received the brunt of the chatter from fans and stans with a plethora of rude tweets directed at her. Hall of Famers were saying they’d punch her in the face and most recently, “paparazzi” waiting outside of the Sky hotel in D.C. to pose questions to Carter about Clark.

Here’s what we know about the ambush: 

The video that’s currently surfacing on social media is said to only show a portion of the interaction that happened Wednesday between Carter and the person on the other side of the camera. Other teammates say it was so bad that they couldn’t leave the bus until team security stepped in. The person said to have approached Carter and her teammates is the person behind the TikTok and YouTube account “Capital Paparazzi.”

According to accounts on X, the account that likely originally posted the video under the username “@brandontodddc” has been deleted.

WHN did extensive research to try and identify the person behind the account but was unable to find a direct source. Several of the watermarks on the YouTube videos are attributed to Wirklichkeit TV which translates from German to “Reality TV” in English. 

After a quick skim through the account, most videos are clips of celebs at the D.C. airport, restaurants or other DMV areas. The video with the most views at 6.4 million is of WWE Superstar Ray Mysterio letting fans know that he can’t autograph what appears to be Funkopop figures.  There’s also a video of Alec Baldwin at the airport, but this one is a bit more intense. Though Baldwin doesn’t respond to the repetitive question “Do you think you owe Donald Trump a thank you for all the funny material he’s giving you?”

 The video goes on for about 2 minutes, but never elicits a response from Baldwin. The video of Carter is only about 20 seconds long, but the result was still the same, no response. The video that was released appears to only show someone asking Carter if she reached out to Clark. A man who appears to be team security runs up and blocks the camera view.

This one incident could potentially open the door for other trolls to feel more comfortable approaching players while out in public, or even with their loved ones. It does appear now that the “X” account that posted the video has since been deleted, leaving some fans to believe that the uploaded video didn’t tell the full story.

Bottom line, what measures, if any, is the league taking to ensure that these players’ safety is not at risk? Will there be extra security for teams? It’s fair to point out that the head coach of the Chicago Sky Teresa Weatherspoon says their security did their job wonderfully, but should hotels have an NDA in place so things like this don’t happen again? Growing the game has always been the goal, but players shouldn’t have to look over their shoulders when they’re preparing to do their jobs.