Three Mystics play for Team Clark
The 2025 WNBA All-Star game was a fitting coronation for Napheesa Collier, who’s been the league’s best player all season. Her team poured in 49 first quarter points, and she dominated from start to finish with 36 points and 9 rebounds and was named MVP.
Collier got all that done in just 19 minutes of action. She shot 13-16 from the floor, 4-5 from deep, and had five offensive boards. This is not dissimilar to her production in regular season games this year. More on that in a moment.
Skylar Diggins, also on Team Collier, posted the first triple-double in WNBA All-Star history — 11 points, 11 rebounds, and 15 assists.
How dominant has Collier been this season? Collier’s PPA so far this season is 307. (PPA is my all around production metric that rewards players for things they do that help a team win and dings them for things that don’t. In PPA, 100 is average and higher is better.) Number two in PPA is A’ja Wilson at 278. The third best score is 233 from Azura Stevens.
This season, Collier has a 33.6% usage rate and an offensive rating 17 points above league average. She shoots well from everywhere — 57.0% on twos, 34.2% on threes, and 94.6% on free throws (not a typo). She grabs 14.2 rebounds per 100 possessions while also producing 6.2 assists, 3.3 steals, and 2.9 turnovers. I’d be tempted to knock her for 4.3 turnovers per 100, but her 1.7-to-1 assists-to-turnovers ratio is better than average. This is a great player having a great season.
Back to tonight, the game itself was an entertaining mix of shotmaking and interviews. Caitlin Clark, sidelined with an injury, had perhaps the best line of the night when asked if she would give her trailing team a pep talk at halftime. “No!” she said. “We’re gonna listen to GloRilla and have a drink…Gatorade, of course.”
She also said her coaching advice would be for her team to take more fours, and she said she would never tell her teammates to play more defense. That’s good work in a short interview.
The league reintroduced the 4-point shot for the game, and the players launched from it early and often. I would love to report the conversion rate, but neither ESPN nor the WNBA website thought to add it to the box score.
I’d love to see the 4-point shot in a truly competitive situation over some period of time. I want to see what percentage players would shoot, as well as what coaches design to generate the high-value shots from their best shooters…and to defend those areas of the floor so far from the basket.
The Mystics had three players in the game, who were part of something of a fourth quarter comeback for Team Clark.
- Brittney Sykes, a nine-year veteran playing in her first All-Star game (she was added to the team as an injury replacement) had 16 points, 3 rebounds, 7 assists on 8-18 shooting. She was 0-9 from three-point range (some of these shots were 28-foot four-pointers).
- Kiki Iriafen, a rookie, had 17 points, 10 rebounds and 2 steals. She he 2-7 from long range.
- Sonia Citron, another of Washington’s rookies, notched 11 points, 2 rebounds, and 2 assists, at least one of which was to Iriafen.
Kudos to ESPN for providing coverage of the ongoing WNBA collective bargaining agreement negotiations. During the pregame, All-Stars came onto the floor wearing black t-shirts that read, “Pay us what you owe us.” This is a reference to the WNBA’s record revenue, and the fact that players are receiving a relatively small share of that revenue. The players are pushing for increased pay and durable revenue sharing.
The WNBA season resumes Tuesday, July 22 with the Los Angeles Sparks (8-14) visiting the Washington Mystics (11-11).