setting the screen, correcting the record.
Choosing six frontcourt players and four backcourt players for the WNBA All-Star Game is never an easy task and casting a media ballot in 2024 feels almost daunting. To separate the cream from the very elite crop, we did not consider players who led the league in turnovers or personal fouls for games. Caitlin Clark and Aliyah Boston of the Indiana Fever were early cuts.
In celebrating the WNBA’s 25th season, the league on Sunday (Sept. 5) revealed during halftime of the hotly-awaited matchup between the Las Vegas Aces and the Chicago Sky (ABC) “The W25” — or the 25 best players in the league’s storied history. Here are the players who made the exclusive list.
ESPN brazenly favors University of Connecticut Huskies women’s basketball players for its Best College Female Athlete ESPY. The blind devotion to UConn sent Caitlin Clark (University of Iowa) home without the award in 2021 even though she outperformed Paige Bueckers: the anointed Husky du jour who received it. UConn has dominated the category so egregiously in the 20-year history of the ESPYS that only two players from other other programs — Candace Parker (University of Tennessee) and Brittney Griner (Baylor University) — have ever won it.
A’ja Wilson, the eventual No. 1 overall draft pick in the 2018 WNBA Draft, would have been the rightful winner had ESPN not made the dubious decision to cancel the category that year.
USA Basketball and the WNBA have worked hard for years to ensure the individual legacies of Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi. Such unbridled devotion, however, has come at increasingly steeper costs in recent years — putting at risk the success of the teams they play for and denying other players the opportunity to chase their dreams. Seimone Augustus held this awareness of other players in mind when considering retirement. By putting “we” over “me,” she surrendered ego and greed, and humbly stepped aside. Is it time for other players who’ve already fulfilled their dreams to follow suit?
Sue Bird’s jersey topped sales during the 2020 WNBA regular season suggesting the veteran Seattle Storm star, and other future Hall of Famers such as Diana Taurasi of the Phoenix Mercury (second in sales) and Candace Parker of the Los Angeles Sparks (third in sales), are gaining long overdue mainstream recognition. But what about the league’s young stars like Breanna Stewart and A’ja Wilson, who will battle in this year’s WNBA Finals for the Storm and Las Vegas Aces, respectively? Will culturally ubiquity come for them before they’re teetering on the door of retirement?