The WNBA announced its All-Star starters and not one Atlanta Dream player made the cut. Atlanta was 12-8, tied atop the Eastern Conference. Angel Reese leads the entire league in rebounds at 11.6 per game, averaging 14.8 points, hauling down double-doubles like it’s a habit. Rhyne Howard finished fifth among guards. Allisha Gray finished sixth. Reese finished seventh among frontcourt players. All three just missed. All three absent from the list anyway.
Angel Reese called it “a slap in the face.” She’s right. She’s just aiming at the wrong wall.
https://x.com/WNBA/status/2072727001195012607
The WNBA’s All-Star voting is 50% fan, 25% media, 25% player. Fans vote for who they watch. Media votes for who they cover. Atlanta — mid-market, no New York buzz, no Las Vegas money, no Indiana Fever gravitational pull — gets fewer eyeballs by default. Not because their players aren’t good. Because the coverage pipeline has never prioritized them.
I’ve watched the Jets do this for fifteen years. Not malicious. Structural. The offensive line doesn’t get fixed because fixing it doesn’t move the needle. A’ja Wilson gets the coverage because she plays in Vegas and is genuinely the best player alive. Caitlin Clark gets it because ESPN built a documentary apparatus around her before she played a single professional minute. The Dream are 12-8 and Reese’s rebounding records put her in historic territory and none of that breaks through because the machine wasn’t pointed at Atlanta. That’s the WNBA’s media gatekeeping problem — not malice, just math, and the math keeps eating the same teams.
The system has a floor, though. The coaches named Reese, Howard, AND Gray as reserves. All three are going to All-Star weekend in Chicago on July 25. The people who actually watch every game got it right.
That’s not nothing. That’s also not enough.
Reserves require coaches to fix what fractured exposure created. Starter votes require fixing the coverage gap before the ballot even opens. The Dream aren’t getting starter votes from fans who barely know their names because the highlight package ended after the Fever segment.
My sister texted me the night of the announcement. She’s 23, Rutgers, actually watches basketball. Her text: “ur wnba takes are bad and u should feel bad.” She also admitted she didn’t vote. Didn’t know Howard had a case until I made it in the group chat the night before the deadline.
That’s the problem in one text message. If I (a guy running a sports blog from a Hoboken couch who has no business playing rec basketball on Tuesday nights) had to explain Rhyne Howard’s All-Star credentials to his own sister the night before the deadline, the Dream have a visibility gap that has nothing to do with how good they are.
Reese should be angry. She should stay angry. Just aim it at the infrastructure.
