Votes, Votes, Votes

Breaking Down the Fans', Players', and Media's All-Star Rankings

Results from the WNBA’s All-Star vote were announced last week and, as is always the case, there was controversy.

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Usually, pre-All-Star game debate centers on the snubs - the inevitable two or three players who are having “All-Star level” seasons but get left off the final rosters. There was some discussion of that, mainly highlighting the cases for Bri Jones of the Dream and Brittany Sykes of the Mystics, two veteran leaders on over-performing teams.

However, The Athletic went with this headline: “Why did Caitlin Clark receive low All-Star Game votes from her WNBA peers?”

To quickly set the stage, three different voting blocs have a say in who starts in an All-Star game: fans, the media, and WNBA players themselves (they can’t vote for players on their own teams). Each group votes separately for Guards and Frontcourt players and the WNBA publishes the results, listing the 10 players at each position with the highest overall score (weighting fan votes 50% and media and player votes at 25% each). Here’s what that looked like this year:

Caitlin Clark finished first in fan voting amongst Guards, and overall, with 1.3 million votes. Given the term for the skyrocketing interest in the WNBA over the last two seasons is called the Caitlin Clark effect, this isn’t surprising. But Clark, hampered by injuries for the first time since high school, has played just 13 games, and while she is second in the league in assists per game, she is well off the pace of her peers in most advanced stats - Neil Paine has her as the 54th best player in wins added per 40 minutes for instance.¹

So, the WNBA players, reasonably, voted Clark as the ninth best guard in the league, ahead of only Kelsey Plum and Jackie Young amongst eventual All-Stars.² The apparent slight drew increased attention because anything remotely related to Caitlin Clark draws attention of a history of Clark’s WNBA peers not exactly showing love to her on the court.

But is this discrepancy really that big of a deal? After all, WNBA players still agree Clark should be an All-Star, and the difference in her ranking amongst fans and players isn’t even the biggest discrepancy on the ballot: Kelsey Plum (6th amongst fans, 16th amongst players) drew a bigger divergence.

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In the history of WNBA All-Star voting, this year is high-water mark for fan contrarian-ness.³ On average, the fans’ All-Star ranking differed from the players’ and media’s by 4-to-5 positions. On a scale of 10, that’s super wide and up significantly from the last voting in 2023.⁴ Players only agreed with the fans’ ranking of a single All-Star this year, Breanna Stewart, at fourth in the Frontcourt.

But, in addition to Plum, six other players in the last four All-Star votes have had at least as big a delta between fan and player votes as Clark.

Sabrina Ionescu is probably the most similar comparison on this list. A highly touted, beloved, fan favorite, she finished 6th in fan voting in 2023, but just 19th amongst players for a difference of +13. Liz Cambage is an interesting name here for the opposite reason in that other players did not like her so much.

What sets Clark apart however is that she was the top overall fan vote-getter, which also earns her the position of team captain. She is unique amongst All-Star captains as the only one to finish outside the top-two in media voting (third) and she is one of only two players to finish outside the top-two in player voting (ninth).

Meanwhile, the media and players have never been more aligned. These two blocs ranked 15 of 20 players within one-position of one another (including the entire Frontcourt) and disagreed by five or more spots on just three Guards (Plum, Clark, and Kelsey Mitchell).

So Who’s Right?

Ultimately we want to know who’s right, right? Well, this is Charting Hoops, so let’s look at the stats.⁵

And … no one is right. On average, all three voting blocs miss the stats-based ranking by 2 or more spots. Again, on a 10-point scale, that’s significant. So much for the wisdom of the crowd.

Of course, even I don’t believe that All-Stars should be picked based on just the stats - that would be boring. All of this is a reminder that at the end of the day, “All-Star” is a loose concept. Fans, media members, and players are going to vote for who they want to see play; who they think deserves the chance to play and get that “All Star” label linked on their Basketball Reference page forever. At the end of the day, they are going to vote for who they are fans of.

And fandom itself can be defined in so many different ways:

• Clark probably got a bunch of votes from casual fans who have heard her name everywhere for years.⁶

• Sabrina probably got a bunch of votes from sneakerheads who wear her shoes.

• Paige probably got a bunch of votes from the TikTok obsessed who love following her relationship with Azzi Fudd online.

• Allisha Gray probably got a bunch of votes from stat nerds who like digging into basketball databases.

And that’s all ok! There is no one way to define fandom, or what makes an All-Star. All 10 starters and all 12 reserves⁷ are talented basketball players making positive impacts on their teams, and I’m excited to see them all ball out in Indy.

There are a lot of people excited to see Caitlin Clark and the other WNBA All-Stars ball out in Indy. As mentioned, Clark got nearly 1.3 million votes from fans. That is 1.2 million more than the highest ever total for a player in league history. Let that sink in.

But more broadly, everyone is getting more votes than ever before. Courtney Williams was the last name the WNBA reported fan vote totals for this year: she received 117k, 40th most. That would have set the mark for most votes ever for a player, surpassing the 96k A’ja Wilson received in 2023. The Caitlin Clark effect is lifting all ships.

Maybe these fans are less aligned to the media and players than we’d like them to be, but at least they are showing up, and hopefully we can educate them together.

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1. Clark’s Indiana (and All-Star) teammates Aliyah Boston and Kelsey Mitchell rank 3rd and 12th in wins added respectively.

2. Who are both having down seasons after a rare “lose-lose” trade.

3. I just finished reading Ulysses by James Joyce, so I kinda forget what is a real world vs a made up one. Apologies.

4. For this analysis I looked at 2025, 2023, 2022, 2019, and 2017 voting. In Olympics years (2024, 2021, 2016) the All-Star game pits the US National team against remaining WNBA All-Stars. The game was not held during the 2020 Covid-shortened season. I can’t find the voting data for 2018. Prior to 2016 rosters were determined entirely by fan vote.

5. Specifically, Neil Paine’s wins added.

6. I can’t help but ask myself, how bad would Clark have had to play to not make the All-Star Game? Like if she was averaging 5 points and 3 assists in 10 games would she be on the team? Probably.

7. Selected by a fourth voting bloc, the WNBA’s head coaches for what it’s worth.