July 10, 2025
Locked On Women’s Basketball: Your hot takes on 2025 WNBA All-Star are probably wrong
Megdal: 'Number one, this stuff's supposed to be fun'
On today’s episode of Locked On Women’s Basketball, host Howard Megdal talks about the 2025 WNBA All-Star class, breaks down his voting ballot and discusses the value of the All-Star game and its many festivities. First, Megdal broke down the top All-Star Draft picks of the two captains, Caitlin Clark and Napheesa Collier:
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“This is a celebration of players and of the best talent in the league coming together,” Megdal said. “I think it’s worth remembering that. I don’t know, maybe that’s too much to ask here in 2025, but man number one, this stuff’s supposed to be fun. So we start with Caitlin Clark and her very first pick, and it’s Aliyah Boston. And that felt so perfect to me. You know, again, Lin Dunn, who [knows] more about women’s basketball than I will ever hope to know, built the Indiana Fever over the last couple of years around having Aliyah Boston as the center and the franchise future in the middle, and Caitlin Clark as the lead guard and the franchise future in the perimeter. And it makes a lot of sense, and the Fever still have to figure out how to make it work [as] a championship team around her. Kelsey Mitchell is going to need to be a part of that, but she’s gonna be a free agent. Fever are gonna have to spend the rest of 2025 trying to make sure that they have a core in place at a moment that everyone’s a free agent, but also potentially, can add almost anyone heading into next off-season. So all these things are worth keeping in mind. But yeah, Caitlin picking Aliyah made sense from a team standpoint, made sense from a personal standpoint.”
“Becoming Caitlin Clark” is out now!
Howard Megdal’s newest book is here! “Becoming Caitlin Clark: The Unknown Origin Story of a Modern Basketball Superstar” captures both the historic nature of Clark’s rise and the critical context over the previous century that helped make it possible, including interviews with Clark, Lisa Bluder (who also wrote the foreword), C. Vivian Stringer, Jan Jensen, Molly Kazmer and many others.
“Napheesa Collier picked Breanna Stewart. Anyone who covered the 2016 Connecticut Huskies has an understanding of how great that team was. That team had eight future WNBA players. Eight future WNBA players. Napheesa Collier was not a primary scorer. That was a team in 2016 that had Breanna Stewart, Moriah Jefferson, Morgan Tuck going 1-2-3 in the 2016 WNBA Draft. Gabby Williams was a role player. Gabby Williams was a role player. Napheesa Collier was a role player on that team. Kia Nurse was a fourth scorer on that team. It’s just remarkable. Again, and the argument will always be UConn 2002 versus 2016, I think that 2016 team was the best team in the history of the UConn program, and so seeing Stewie and Phee back together on the same court, not playing against each other like they are in Unrivaled or in the 2024 WNBA Finals, that’s going to be fun. I’m really looking forward to that.”
Then, Megdal, who contributed to the 2025 All-Star media votes, talked about his approach to creating his ballot, from the stats he values most to how he evaluates the overall arc of a player’s season so far:
“I have the honor of being asked to vote in the All-Star game,” Megdal said. “Couple of things that I take really seriously: one is, people’s bonuses are affected by this. People’s Hall of Fame cases someday are affected by this. It is a human endeavor. There’s nothing automatic or computerized about it. I watch as much as I can, I read as much as I can, I look at all the numbers as much as I can. I try to put them all in context as much as I can. And then I select. And I always have more players I would like to see honored than I can. My ballot is given to me with a very specific end point that I need to hit, which is to say, it’s 10 players. I’m voting on starters. Six front court players, four backcourt players. This year, I found the frontcourt to be a little easier than usual. I use Stathead, Her Hoop Stats is super helpful, stats.wnba.com is really helpful to be able to see how and why people are getting the points they’re able to do. I look at lineups. How are they performing with their other top players? Are they making their teams better when they’re on the court? And in what ways? … Plus minus is a largely context-free stat, net rating is a better stat for me, but even then, it’s like, well, when is it coming? Is it coming at times the teams need it the most? Is it coming in ways that reflect the team’s overall philosophy?”
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“There’s just a lot that goes into it,” Megdal continued. “You can’t just [say], alright, here’s the number, it’s win shares. I’ll grab the top 10, and that’s it. It just doesn’t work that way. But by definition, when it doesn’t work that way, and I don’t know what other people’s processes are, but I know my colleagues, so many of them take it really seriously. It’s trying to figure out what works the best. And it’s never coming into it with, ‘hey, I want to find a reason to vote for that person,’ or ‘I want to find a reason not to vote for that person.’ [That’s just] not how we do it. So nothing’s perfect. No human endeavor is, but this is how we go about it.”
Tune in to hear Megdal’s full WNBA All-Star ballot break down and more about the upcoming All-Star celebrations. Make sure to subscribe to the Locked On Women’s Basketball podcast to keep learning about women’s college basketball, the WNBA, basketball history and much more!
