Five Out: All-Star Snubs, Jonquel Jones' MVP Candidacy and a Book Tour Gone Wrong

With WNBA All-Star weekend right around the corner, we take a look at some of the biggest storylines in the league before we hit the halfway mark of the regular season...

Whether it was the All-Star roster release or Team USA’s win over Brazil in the FIBA Americup Final, it’s very clear that women’s basketball is in extremely good hands. The 2024 and 2025 rookie classes have been as good as advertised, the WNBA’s three best players in my eyes — A’ja Wilson, Napheesa Collier and Caitlin Clark — are 28, 28 and 23 years old, respectively. Regardless of when you arrived or who you root for, I think we can all agree on one thing: women’s basketball is having a moment.

What makes it all the more exciting is the fact that this isn’t even the crest of the wave. If anything, I’d say we’re still a few years away from a true peak in interest around the sport. During a time when it feels like the forces of capitalism are scrambling to get the last drops out of an oversqueezed fruit, our little corner of the world is enjoying the prospect of limitless possibilities (provided everyone can keep their head on straight long enough that we see that come to fruition). To that end, I say “don’t worry, be happy.” The sport is in a great place.

Now, onto the column…

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1. The case for two All-Star snubs…

Generally, I don’t have much of an issue with the WNBA All-Star lists this year. Everyone involved has earned a chance to be there while the only team without a representative is Connecticut which makes sense given their situation. But I do think it’s a fair critique of the system that Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen are the two selections from Washington while Brittney Sykes sits at home in a couple weeks.

She’s the Mystics leading scorer (17.9 PPG) and distributor (4.6 APG), both career highs by substantial margins. There’s an efficiency argument to be made (she’s shooting 36.8% from the field so far) but that falls apart when you consider Kelsey Plum (37.7%) and Rhyne Howard (34.2%) are in the ASG field. The flip of the percentage argument is that she’s shooting a career best from three point range so far this year. As a player that’s been mostly reduced to ‘elite defender and not much else’ for a lot of her career, Sykes feels like she’s made the leap towards becoming a complete player in a system that maximizes her skillset. I understand that Citron and Iriafen have larger fanbases and name recognition coupled with impressive rookie campaigns. But the Mystics, to me, are a three headed monster and to leave one of the three at home doesn’t feel right. If I’m swapping her out with anyone, it’s probably Jackie Young if we’re being honest.

The frontcourt is a much, much tougher place to argue snubs. Can you realistically push Kayla Thornton, who is having a career year of her own, out in favor of someone else? This one might not hold as much water as the argument for Sykes’ inclusion but I’d like to make an argument for L.A. Sparks forward Azura Stevens. For really the first time in her career, Stevens has been fully healthy, playing in a system that caters to her skillset and the numbers point to a player that is, at long last, reaching her potential.

Stevens is averaging 14.8 points and 8.5 rebounds (Aliyah Boston was 14.0 PPG and 8.9 RPG last year, for reference), shooting 51.3% from the field (good for 9th in the WNBA) and 38.7% from three (a career high with her most career attempts per game). While she doesn’t have a ton of frontcourt help I can understand the knock on her ability to be a defensive stopper and the wisdom of adding a second All-Star from a bottom four team in the league. But much like Sykes (and Thornton, for that matter), I feel like an All-Star nod should also factor in players that improve tremendously over the first half of a year. If not a weekend in Indianapolis, at least consider her on the Most Improved Player ballot. She’s more than earned the right to be in both discussions this year.

2. …And a legit case for Jonquel Jones as an MVP candidate.

These are the hot takes that you come to the column for, folks. But after watching another New York Liberty loss over the weekend, I’m ready to make an argument that if the Most Valuable Player award is defined by its true definition — the player who is most valuable to their franchise — Jonquel Jones is absolutely in the mix. The Liberty are 8-1 with Jones in the lineup this season and 4-5 without her. I know I’ve written in prior columns that the Liberty’s ceiling is more or less dictated by her health but I think I’m ready to take it a step further.

Is Jones, in addition to A’ja Wilson and Napheesa Collier, one of those players that can make or break a title chase? The only reason I’m not throwing Caitlin Clark into this mix yet is because I need to see a deep run with the Fever before I can make a determination. But in the case of JJ, A and Phee, we’ve seen what it looks like when they’re firing on all cylinders and what their teams look like when they aren’t. The Lynx are probably the most insulated but we’ve seen ample evidence at this point that Collier is a force multiplier that takes Minnesota from an exciting-if-not-streaky second round playoff team to one that can come one dubious foul call from a WNBA title. We’ve been having a conversation for two straight years now in Vegas about A’ja Wilson and just how different it all looks when she isn’t on the floor. Jones has been an unsung hero for most of her career and fell through the coverage cracks behind Sabrina Ionescu and Breanna Stewart when the three teamed up in New York. You could make the argument that Jones’ relative lack of superstardom is due to the same type of coverage equity that longtime fans have been trying to draw attention to for years.

Which is what makes what’s happening now all the more maddening. Her injury should’ve been treated as a much bigger deal by major media outlets when it happened. This is a former league MVP, a vital cog in winning New York’s first WNBA championship, going for a non-insignificant amount of time. It matters. While some of the struggles can also be attributed to Leonie Fiebich, it’s evident that Stewart and Ionescu alone isn’t enough to be a top end team in the league.

When MVP voting comes around, the discussion starts to resemble a Most Outstanding Player award instead of Most Valuable. If we get to a point where JJ returns and the Liberty look like the defending league champions again, I don’t know how you leave her out of the top three or four when all is said and done even if the stats aren’t there. You could make a similar argument for Alyssa Thomas but maybe I’ll keep that in the chamber for next week’s column or a standalone piece down the road…

3. No, the Indiana Fever are not better without Caitlin Clark but that’s not the point…

Let’s start with the basketball here. The substance of what Carolyn Peck (who, mind you, is an NCAA champion coach who has earned the right to talk ball) said on ESPN over the weekend wasn’t particularly wrong. But wording is important and when you open up your remarks with a superlative it’s bound to be taken a certain way.

When you look at the Fever from an opponent scouting perspective and you take Caitlin Clark off the floor, the scout does become a lot different. It doesn’t mean that the league’s best guard isn’t the league’s best guard or that she isn’t the difference between the Fever being a title contender and being early playoff exit.

It’s worth noting that Aliyah Boston is having a career year so far. She’s currently at a career high in points and assists per game, shooting her best percentage from the field while turning the ball over less than ever. Kelsey Mitchell is maintaining the pace she set last season with Clark as her backcourt mate and Natasha Howard has had three double-doubles in her last four games (the fourth being a 21 and 9 against Los Angeles). Does it mean they’re better without Clark? Not a chance. But it does show that there are more weapons on this team than the Fever sometimes get credit for.

Beyond that, it isn’t a slight on CC to say that the defense is a little bit better without her on the floor. She’s been hunted on that side of the ball since college and it will always be that way until she changes it. Granted, what you get back on the offensive end is probably something you can live with. The loss to the Sparks lays bare the nonsense associated with the idea that the Fever are better without Clark. But they do bring some interesting components when she’s not on the floor that I’d love to see them have with her.

Regardless, I think this is kind of the issue with the conversation around the Fever right now. The need to shoehorn Caitlin into any discussion about the team is unnecessary, especially if your intended goal is to elevate the two other stars on this roster. There’s room enough to go around in spotlighting Indiana’s best players. Maybe some of the attention given to the bench player can be given to the actual stars instead while Clark gets to work her way back into the lineup in peace.

4. Is there an actual conflict of interest in the WNBA CBA negotiations?

To make a long answer short, there might be a conflict of interest between the WNBA’s player reps — who own the 3x3 Unrivaled league — and the WNBA. But ultimately, that might be a good thing for the players.

Now, let’s make a short answer long.

Personally, I see no issue with any type of player leverage wherever it comes from. According to an April report from Front Office Sports, Unrivaled made over $27 million in revenue and nearly broke even financially. There are plans to add seats to their Miami arena and add two road arenas next year. The league averaged roughly 221,000 viewers throughout the inaugural run with 364,000 tuning in for the championship game. For reference, the WNBA averaged 306,000 viewers in 2021 with their most watched game of the regular season netting 755,000. While the top-end numbers are still far off, the average viewership of Unrivaled suggests a value in their inventory.

While there are all sorts of logistical hurdles if the league were to extend to five-a-side and try to do what the WNBA does, I don’t think they’d have to do it. In the next couple years, there are two 5x5 leagues and another 3x3 league coming online. That’s before we get into European leagues and how much they’ve improved from a pay and player comfort standpoint.

Ultimately, anyone downing the leverage of the players or the possibility of a lockout is doing the owners work for them. I anticipate this upcoming meeting that’s supposed to happen during All-Star Weekend to be contentious. But people forget that’s how this kind of stuff is supposed to be. Any chance for the players to stand on business and have an escape hatch if the owners want to play hardball is good for the players. This is how labor gains have been made throughout American history. Why should WNBA players settle for something less?

5. On Christine Brennan, DiJonai Carrington and the pluralism of truth.

Alright, let’s dive into the mud.

My feelings on Christine Brennan are well known (see this past column which I’ve pulled back in front of the paywall for those that want to read). My respect for her as a trailblazing woman in the field of sports journalism is only eclipsed by my disappointment in watching her descent into culture war adjacent sportswriter.

With that said, I don’t necessarily believe that this upcoming unauthorized biography on Caitlin Clark and her first year in the WNBA is going to be riddled with lies and inaccuracies. In fact, I have a funny feeling it’ll actually reveal some things to the public that have been talked about in journalist circles for years. For example, the idea that WNBA players haven’t had media training or are prepared for this level of scrutiny is something media members have discussed for years. There’s a ‘cake and eat it too’ approach that some individuals in the league seem to have when it comes to media attention that just isn’t rooted in reality. We, as media, aren’t a monolith and some don’t share my opinion on that. But I can tell you for a fact, there’s plenty of us that do.

I’ve written about it before but it feels as though sometimes players expect the media treatment that is typically reserved for musicians or pop stars, where they get to completely control the media narrative behind legions of stan armies on social media. Except unlike music or most artistic mediums, where subjectivity is the only way to assess the art, sports is objective. In sports, you either play well or you don’t. There isn’t really a lot of wiggle room to argue that.

Where Brennan has always seemed to fall short, be it in her journalistic career or within the WNBA, is the clear blind spots she has in the pursuit in getting a story. It was apparent in her reporting on the Russian doping case in figure skating and it’s apparent here. There’s a clear generational gap at play and Brennan is from an era of journalism where people are distilled into characters instead of actual human beings. It’s understandable to see where someone like DiJonai Carrington would be upset about the way she, NaLyssa Smith or other players were talked about or questioned by Brennan in particular.

But truth can sometimes be pluralistic in nature. Sometimes, there’s only one fundamental truth. Other times, especially when it comes to human beings and stories like this, there can be multiple truths and perspectives. I don’t doubt there’s a bit of embellishment in how Brennan is writing about Carrington specifically. I also don’t doubt that Brennan has a clear blind spot for how she, as a white woman, is coming across in her questioning towards black players. The issue is that Carrington has also displayed a bit of a pattern of behavior that would make public crashouts or going at media members over perceived slights believable. Is it all that out of left field to believe that she might actually have factored into some of the discord within the Fever locker room or around the league season? Not entirely.

Unfortunately, Brennan loses the rhetorical high ground when she spends her time doing podcasts on Outkick and cozying up to a legion of fans that aren’t here for Caitlin Clark, the Indiana Fever or the WNBA and instead see an outlet to attack a league primarily composed of black and LGBTQ women through a convenient (albeit unwilling) proxy in Caitlin Clark. After a certain point, the actual reporting does come into question because of the strangely parasocial nature with which Brennan treats Clark, going as far as a legitimately attacking anyone that doesn’t recognize her greatness. While there’s plenty of room for truth in the middle, it requires people to be introspective enough to understand where they may be falling short in the conversation. Right now, it doesn’t seem that anyone is interested in that which means, sadly, the battle will likely continue.