What DiJonai Carrington just experienced with the Chicago Sky feels considerably more like a brief cameo than a complete season. With just 11 appearances to her name, even she is not sure what the year amounted to, though she enjoyed her time in Chicago and is not ruling out a return.
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“I honestly don’t have many thoughts,” Carrington said about her future with the Sky in an interview shared by Front Office Sports’ Colin Salao. “I played a handful of games, and even those games were more just each game was just trying to get the dust off a little bit more. So I don’t know how to gauge this past season.”
This year saw her lowest appearance tally in the league. Though she also appeared in just 11 games last year for Minnesota, she’d already played 20 more games for Dallas in the same year.
“Then moving forward, there’s a lot of things to look at: look at who’s on the roster, look at health, different things like that. But I enjoyed my time here, and I would never say no. But you never know. I’m on a one-year,” she added.
DiJonai Carrington joined the Chicago Sky on April 12, signing a one-year deal worth $650,000. With no remaining options attached to the contract, she enters the upcoming offseason as an unrestricted free agent, entirely free to negotiate with any franchise she chooses.
Her time with the Sky can, however, best be described as brief, injury-disrupted, and full of unfulfilled potential. While her arrival had been one of the more anticipated offseason acquisitions, physical setbacks prevented her from establishing anything resembling consistency or rhythm throughout the campaign.
First, an inherited foot injury from her previous season with the Minnesota Lynx kept her out for the Chicago Sky’s first 27 games, more than three months on the sideline. And when she finally made her season debut on July 30, she immediately showed flashes of what the Sky had signed her for. Then, a month later about four minutes into the Connecticut Sun game, things looked bad.
Across those 11 appearances, DiJonai Carrington averaged 8.8 points, 3.1 rebounds, and 0.6 assists per game. With court time as limited as hers, through no fault of her own, those numbers reflect only a fraction of what she is capable of.
The lingering feeling from her tenure is most likely one of “what could have been” for both player and organization. The Chicago Sky front office now faces a meaningful decision about whether to bring her back or move in a different direction with that investment.
DiJonai Carrington is also not the only significant free agency decision facing the Sky this offseason. Alongside Carrington, the Sky also have key veterans like Natasha Cloud and Rachel Banham entering unrestricted free agency. And like Carrington, both players have also hinted at a willingness to return. Cloud, in particular, was direct about her desire to be part of something being built.
“I want to be a part of building something. That’s what I’ve enjoyed here,” she said.
For Cloud, however, any return depends on the front office demonstrating a genuine commitment to roster investment, organizational culture, and a clear competitive direction under head coach Tyler Marsh, whom she vehemently defended. Those demands feel entirely reasonable given the fact that the Chicago Sky finished the season at 16-28, missing the playoffs for the third consecutive year.
In the face of that competitive reality, DiJonai Carrington also faces her own decision to make. As an unrestricted free agent holding all the leverage, she is entirely free to pursue a championship contender rather than committing to a franchise still in the early stages of a rebuild.
Whether the appeal of a winning environment ultimately pulls her away from Chicago, if a contender comes calling, is therefore an open question.
But then, what her statement does make clear is that the door in Chicago is not closed. Now, the next move belongs to the Sky.