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Brittney Griner will be starting in the WNBA All-Star Game a year after she was an honourary choice by the league while she was being detained in Russia.
The Phoenix Mercury’s centre was chosen by fans, media and players Sunday for her ninth all-star game, most of any of this year’s starters. Last season all the players wore Griner No. 42 jerseys for the second half of the game that was played in Chicago.
A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart were the top vote-getters among fans and will be the captains of the two teams when the game is played in Las Vegas on July 15. The two players were also captains last year and are each making their fifth all-star appearances. Wilson’s team won the game last year.
Other frontcourt players chosen to start include rookie Aliyah Boston of the Indiana Fever. She would be the first rookie to start an all-star game since Shoni Schimmel did it in 2014. Overall eight rookies have been chosen to start the all-star game.
Satou Sabally of Dallas and Elena Delle Donne of Washington round out the frontcourt starters.
The backcourt starters are Las Vegas teammates Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young, Seattle’s Jewell Loyd and Dallas’ Arike Ogunbowale.
The reserves will be chosen by the league’s head coaches, who will choose three guards, five frontcourt players and four at either position. Coaches can’t vote for their own players. The reserves will be announced on July 1.
Stewart and Wilson will draft their rosters on July 8.
Fan balloting accounts for 50 per cent of the vote to determine starters for the game. WNBA players and a media panel account for 25 per cent each. Player’s scores were calculated by averaging their weighted rank from the three groups.
🌟 INTRODUCING YOUR 2023 <a href=”https://twitter.com/ATT?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@ATT</a> <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/WNBAALLSTAR?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#WNBAALLSTAR</a> STARTERS 🌟 <a href=”https://t.co/z8azHF7fvB”>pic.twitter.com/z8azHF7fvB</a>
—@WNBA
Mercury part ways with head coach Nygaard
The last-place Mercury fired head coach Vanessa Nygaard and replaced her with assistant Nikki Blue for the remainder of the season, the team announced Sunday.
The Mercury have gotten off to a rough start, dropping 10 of their first 12 games, including a 97-74 loss in Seattle on Saturday night.
Nygaard took over the team last season and went 17-30. It wasn’t an easy year-and-a-half for Nygaard, with star Griner missing all of last season while she was detained in Russia.
“We have chosen to make a change at head coach,” Mercury general manager Jim Pitman said in a statement. “We thank Vanessa Nygaard for the way she endured and managed the adversity of the last year-plus. Our organization and our fans have high expectations for this team, and we have not reached those with our performance this year. We have confidence in the job Nikki Blue will do as interim head coach for the remainder of the 2023 season.”
Griner returned to the court Saturday after missing the previous three games with a hip injury.
“What’s happening isn’t going to cut it,” Griner said following the team’s fifth straight loss. “It’s the first time I’ve ever had a record like this. It’s really frustrating. I don’t know. I guess tear it down and rebuild it back up. I really don’t get it. It’s not going the way we want it to go. It’s not the Phoenix Mercury basketball we all know.”
Blue joined the Mercury coaching staff last season and has 15 years of coaching experience in the WNBA and college.
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