The WNBA All-Star Game, like any other All-Star Game, is an exhibition. There are no real stakes at all. It exists for the sole purpose of being fun and self-congratulatory. Hey, you’re one of the best in the world at your job, go do it with the other people who are also the best in the world, and we’ll televise the whole thing. With those parameters in mind, it’s easy to understand when people don’t go that hard on the court and instead go extremely hard off the court. Caitlin Clark said it plainly before the game: “We joke about winning, but at the end of the day, it’s not that serious.”
Clark was one of the weekend’s All-Star team captains, which meant she was in charge of hand selecting the members of her squad, Team Clark. Unfortunately for the basketball fans who wanted to see her take a crack at the All-Star Game’s special 28-foot four-point shots, Clark is dealing with a nagging right groin injury that prevented her from playing in the game.
But based on videos from Friday night that surfaced online, one might have wondered if members of the other team might have missed Saturday’s game for very different reasons.
Social media was plastered with clips of Team Collier—the All-Star team captained by Minnesota Lynx magnate Napheesa Collier and including Courtney Williams, Kelsey Plum, Paige Bueckers, and Angel Reese—indulging in the All-Star night life. The events of Friday night led to Reese playfully giving her team a new name (Team Hangover), and also led to Saturday morning’s shootaround getting canceled. All signs pointed to Team Collier being debilitated by some of the most vicious hangovers in human history. (If Team Clark was up late the night before, there was little evidence of it online.)
Against all odds, in a valiant, stouthearted performance, the band of hooligans pulled out a resounding 20-point win. Williams had 13 points, Plum had 16, and seasoned vets Allisha Gray and Nneka Ogwumike combined for 34. Team Collier’s 151 total points, aided by the novelty four-point shot and the traditional matador defense that defines every All-Star Game, set a new record for the event. Not only that, their fearless leader set a record as well. Collier—the rudder of a boat that could have been dangerously wobbly—dropped 36 points, the most ever in an All-Star Game.
“We set a lot of records,” Collier marveled at her postgame press conference, her All-Star Game MVP trophy shining right next to her. “Skylar [Diggins] had a triple-double, which is insane in an All-Star Game! We set the record for scoring; it’s just so fun. We had a really great time.”
Collier—who had one half of the inimitable StudBudz duo on her roster—knew her role as team mother extended beyond the basketball court.
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