The Atlanta Dream are 12-8, tied atop the Eastern Conference. Angel Reese leads the entire WNBA in rebounds. Rhyne Howard is averaging 18.6 points and 2.5 steals. Allisha Gray is at 18.4 points per game. When the All-Star starters were announced Thursday, not one of them made it. Reese, per Heavy.com, called it exactly what it was: “a slap in the face.”
https://x.com/alexaphilippou/status/2072728216049947088
She didn’t stop there. “I expect to be disrespected,” Reese said. “I’m sure we’re still going to be All-Stars. I have no doubt in my mind that we still will be, but I think it is important to note that none of us were starters on a team that has had so much success this year.”
That’s not a complaint. That’s a ledger.
Reese finished 7th among frontcourt players in fan voting. Howard finished 5th among guards. Gray 6th. The ten starters include Paige Bueckers and Caitlin Clark, who finished fifth in the All-Star fan vote yet still made starters, along with three players from the Indiana Fever — the league’s marquee market, the team that sells out every road arena it visits. The fan vote is 50 percent of the formula. Atlanta doesn’t move the needle in Indy. The math wasn’t going to be kind.
What the All-Star selection process actually rewards is marketability framed as merit. Bruising frontcourt players who dominate the glass don’t photograph as cleanly as isolation scorers. Her record-setting rebounding season is the kind of production that wins games and loses award races. Reese leads the league in rebounds and got beaten out by players who score more cleanly and play in better television markets. That’s not a hot take. That’s just what happened.
The counterargument writes itself: the Dream went on a four-game losing streak around the voting window, and some would prefer Reese stay quiet and let the reserves announcement fix it. But “wait for reserves” is advice that only makes sense if you think the starters vote was close to right. It wasn’t. And the people getting passed over — Howard, Gray — tend to stay quiet. Reese said she spoke up specifically because her teammates don’t.
I cover the WNBA enough to know that this league rewards the players who make its broadcast partners comfortable. That’s not a cynical take. It’s a structural one.
Reese wasn’t wrong about the snub, and she wasn’t wrong that she had to be the one to say it. “I haven’t really said much this year in the media,” she acknowledged, “because honestly it’s been tough for me over the last two years. But I feel like it was important for me to speak for my teammates that don’t necessarily speak for themselves all the time.”
That’s the part that actually matters. Not the personal slight — Reese handles that with one sentence and moves on. It’s the acknowledgment that visibility is unevenly distributed even inside the league, that Howard and Gray can put up 18-plus points and not generate the kind of noise that moves a fan vote. Reese knows her name is an exception, and she used it.
The reserves come out today. All three Dream players will almost certainly make the roster. The starters vote will be a footnote by next week.
“Slap in the face” is a quote that doesn’t go back in the bag.
