DiJonai Carrington spent last week insisting the Sophie Cunningham fallout was overblown. Four days later, she gave critics fresh footage to work with.
During Chicago’s 91-71 loss to the Golden State Valkyries on Wednesday, Carrington made contact with two different players above the neck. She was guarding Cecilia Zandalasini on the perimeter when her swipe at the ball caught the Valkyries forward near the eye. Later in the game, she jumped with Tiffany Hayes on a layup attempt, missed the ball entirely, and landed a hand across Hayes’ mouth.
Neither play was ruled a flagrant or technical foul. Carrington did pick up her second technical of the season in the third quarter for arguing with an official, adding another entry to a growing list of incidents.
DiJonai Carrington not happy with no call on the shot 😬
She receives a technical foul.#WNBAonUSA | Sky ☁️ | Valkyries ⚔️ pic.twitter.com/rL9OYfxrQR
— USA Sports (@usasports) August 13, 2026
The timing made the plays impossible to ignore. Just last week, Carrington was ejected for a Flagrant 2 on Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham, a foul during a layup attempt that left Cunningham bleeding from the mouth.
Minutes after her ejection, Carrington posted “WHITE PRIVILEGE” on her Instagram Threads account, a message many read as an accusation that race shaped the officiating decision.
Carrington has since said that reading was a misunderstanding of her intent. She addressed the criticism directly in a post on X two days after the Cunningham foul.
“I’ve never once claimed that the assessment of the foul was white privilege (that was your assumption),” Carrington wrote. “I actually went to school, one of the top universities might I add, to educate myself on this exact subject. I would never use that term as a rhetorical weapon knowing the historical and social weight it holds without having the proper evidence to substantiate it.”
The WNBA has not issued any public discipline for either the flagrant foul or the social media post, and has not responded to requests for comment on the matter. That silence has become part of the story in its own right, especially with Carrington now tied to three separate face-area incidents over a four-day stretch.
Carrington’s night against Golden State was rough by any measure. She finished with three points on 1-of-9 shooting, adding three turnovers across 24 minutes as the Sky dropped their game to Golden State’s fifth straight win. Cunningham, back off the bench for Chicago, managed just three points on 1-of-9 shooting herself in the same contest.
A Reputation DiJonai Carrington Has Fought For Years
This is not new territory for Carrington. During the 2024 WNBA playoffs, she caught Caitlin Clark in the eye on a defensive close-out, leaving Clark with a black eye and sparking a similar round of accusations. Both players called that contact unintentional at the time.
Carrington pushed back hard against the dirty-player label as recently as June 2025, writing on social media that she simply plays hard and never lets up on a contested ball. That defense gets harder to sustain every time a new clip surfaces, and this week produced two more.
None of this means Carrington set out to hurt anyone against Golden State. Her left hand on the Zandalasini swipe, and her closeout on Hayes both look like a player selling out for a stop, not someone hunting contact. But intent stops mattering once the pattern gets this long, and officials, opponents, and the league office are all watching her far more closely now than they were two weeks ago.
The next flagrant call against Carrington will not be judged in isolation. It will be read against Cunningham, Zandalasini, Hayes, and Clark before them. Whether the WNBA finally steps in with a suspension or a fine may end up shaping that read as much as anything Carrington does on the floor.