
Everyone, calm down about Caitlin Clark's All-Star player votes
For the second consecutive season, Clark was named an All-Star. The Indiana guard will also serve as captain alongside Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier on July 19 when the 2025 WNBA All-Star is held in Indianapolis. Clark garnered over 1.2 million votes, a record-breaking amount, ahead of this month's festivities. Collier was not far behind with 1.1 million votes. That should be what the online chatter is about ― a celebration of the players and the growth the WNBA continues to churn out ― but here we are, once again, deeply embroiled in toxic nonsense.
WNBA ALL-STAR: WNBA All-Star ballot with Caitlin Clark, Napheesa Collier
On Monday, the league revealed the voting breakdown for the top 10 finishers among fans, media and players. While some discrepancies in how those three groups view Clark are expected, it's the player vote that's ratcheted up the worst parts of women's basketball discourse after Clark ranked ninth among guards.
"Absolutely pure jealously that WNBA players voted Caitlin Clark the ninth best guard," said broadcaster Dick Vitale, echoing where the narratives have gone since Monday afternoon. "Some day they will realize what she has done for all of the players in the WNBA."
This is far from the first time allegations of supposed player "jealousy" have been tossed around. Anytime there is a perceived slight against Clark, be it fouls, physical play, or, yes, even All-Star voting ranks, a vicious cycle of uninformed takes starts up again.
Frankly, everyone needs to calm down.
The WNBA All-Star rankings among the players was for this season ― as in 2025. It isn't an amalgamation of Clark's impact over the last two years. While she is a generational talent and a tremendous player who has certainly altered the fabric of the league, this season hasn't been her best. Clark has missed 7 games due to injuries, and her baseline stats among the guards of the league are lower by even her standards.
Despite being first among guards in assists per game (8.9), she's eighth in points (18.2 per matchup), third in made 3-pointers (2.6 per game), and Clark has the most turnovers among guards with 5.9 giveaways per contest. For comparison, in 2024, she was fourth in points per game, first in made 3-point shots per matchup, and her turnovers per contest (higher due to the sheer volume she handles) were lower at 5.6 per game.
Clark's current production isn't particularly alarming, but for a player of her caliber, who began the season with a triple-double, the standard is higher, and thus, so are the expectations. When peeling back the ranking by her colleagues, an understanding of how the players arrived at such a conclusion doesn't seem as jarring. Furthermore, knee-jerk reactions to the rankings do little to take into consideration what the players potentially value.
Do they want her to be a better one-on-one defender? Would they like to see more three-level scoring from Clark? Could her shot selection improve? Answers to those sorts of questions are currently unknown, and without the background knowledge and explanations from the player pool who voted, the automatic assumption of jealousy feels willfully short-sighted.
Additionally, Clark wasn't the only guard whose rank caught the eyes of the public. For example, Los Angeles Sparks guard Kelsey Plum, who is top six or better in multiple categories amongst guards (including a group-leading 20.6 points per game) was ranked 16th by her peers. Yet, the outrage for Plum, a two-time WNBA champion and one of the top guards in years past, seems minimal in comparison.
This isn't to say that people don't have a right to feel taken aback by Clark's ranking, but the outrage feels hollow when others are facing the same kind of discrepancy, and voting, at its core, is objective. The premise asks people to be on the same page and value the same things about a player without being in the same room with one another to align on it. That's likely going to be nearly impossible even with what people assume is a clear-cut choice.
In other words, Caitlin Clark is still Caitlin Clark regardless of an All-Star ranking, and unhinged takes that bulldoze the lines of reasonable thinking aren't needed in a promising WNBA landscape.

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