No Offseason Newsletter 🏀 | This is The Athletic’s women’s basketball newsletter. Sign up here to receive No Offseason directly in your inbox.Welcome back to No Offseason. Controversy continues. Today:
⭐ All-Star voting drama
Let’s go.Controversy: Missing All-Star ballots?The WNBA All-Star starters have been announced, and as with every season, not without a little bit of drama. This year, that mostly comes from the player vote.First off, fewer than half of the WNBA’s rostered players (not including those on developmental contracts) submitted a ballot for the All-Star starters.Considering the player portion of the vote counts for 25 percent of the total, that’s a massive gap in the voting bloc. Even if the Los Angeles Sparks are excused, since not all of the players received their ballots in time, that’s still 50 percent participation across the other 14 teams. Do the players take this responsibility seriously if the majority of them aren’t even filling out their ballots? It doesn’t seem like it.And then there’s questions around those who do fill out the ballots … because they have produced some curious results.
Kelsey Plum is the WNBA’s leading scorer among guards, and finished down in 12th in the player vote, a year after being ranked 16th by her peers.
