The fan votes are in, and the league has announced All-Star Game starters. Pelton and the Shock's John Maxwell discuss.
The Western winners are at least defensible, though if a computer picked starters we'd surely get the Claw. We voted for Katie Smith (a lot), but her free throws were down for the first few weeks of the season, and when they came back, her long-range shot went away: she's a superhero, but she has yet to play a complete first-rate Katie-style game this year.
The Eastern winners are rather odd. Temeka Johnson and Dawn Staley have almost identical assist and rebound numbers, but Johnson scores 10.4 per game, Staley 5.6. Temeka will have plenty of chances, though, and people just like to give Dawn Staley awards: I don't have a big problem with that.
Deanna Nolan, the best non-Connecticut Eastern guard, isn't there. Instead we get Becky, who's fun to watch, but scores much less. Hammon and Nolan carry almost the same assist-to-turnover ratio, and get about the same number of steals per game, though Becky does shoot more (and better) for three. At least we'll get to see her play shooting guard, her natural position.
It's in the frontcourt where the voters look silly. The best team in the league has no representatives. Margo ranks second in defensive rebounding, field-goal percentage, and blocks per game: she ain't there. Instead we get Ruth Riley, a perfectly logical choice for 2003 or 2004. Taj McWilliams-Franklin is having her best year ever. Instead we get Tamika Catchings, who isn't, and Swin Cash, who still hasn't played this year.
Swin's win reflects badly on (UConn) fans. The rest of the picks, though, make sense when you think about how the election gets conducted. Not only do fans tend to vote for their home teams (giving New York, if not Detroit, built-in advantages), but fans start voting as soon as the season begins, which means that we are necessarily voting as much on last year's performance as on this year's.
I didn't vote for Dydek until last week, because I had no idea she'd be this effective (I should have known: Thibault hasn't made a bad personnel decision yet). No voter could have known on June 1 that Catchings' scoring would decline, nor that Nolan's would climb by almost 50%. And nobody in early May (when the ballot got printed) could have known that Adrian Williams would get waived, nor that Wecker (my preseason ROY pick) would lose her season after one half of one game. (Both players appeared on printed All-Star ballots.)
All-Star voting, in other words, has problems because it starts so soon-- but any cure would be worse than the disease. The league could start balloting later in June, or restrict it to Web-based voting. But both changes would reduce the total number of ballots, thus hurting the league's marketing (because it uses the ballots to collect fans' contact info).
I'd rather have silly results and more folks voting than more logical results but less fan involvement: it's the All-Star Game, not the league finals (though this year they'll likely end up in the same place).
Any egregious mistakes can be remedied by the Eastern and Western coaches, whose votes select the reserves.
The Western winners are at least defensible, though if a computer picked starters we'd surely get the Claw. We voted for Katie Smith (a lot), but her free throws were down for the first few weeks of the season, and when they came back, her long-range shot went away: she's a superhero, but she has yet to play a complete first-rate Katie-style game this year.
The Eastern winners are rather odd. Temeka Johnson and Dawn Staley have almost identical assist and rebound numbers, but Johnson scores 10.4 per game, Staley 5.6. Temeka will have plenty of chances, though, and people just like to give Dawn Staley awards: I don't have a big problem with that.
Deanna Nolan, the best non-Connecticut Eastern guard, isn't there. Instead we get Becky, who's fun to watch, but scores much less. Hammon and Nolan carry almost the same assist-to-turnover ratio, and get about the same number of steals per game, though Becky does shoot more (and better) for three. At least we'll get to see her play shooting guard, her natural position.
It's in the frontcourt where the voters look silly. The best team in the league has no representatives. Margo ranks second in defensive rebounding, field-goal percentage, and blocks per game: she ain't there. Instead we get Ruth Riley, a perfectly logical choice for 2003 or 2004. Taj McWilliams-Franklin is having her best year ever. Instead we get Tamika Catchings, who isn't, and Swin Cash, who still hasn't played this year.
Swin's win reflects badly on (UConn) fans. The rest of the picks, though, make sense when you think about how the election gets conducted. Not only do fans tend to vote for their home teams (giving New York, if not Detroit, built-in advantages), but fans start voting as soon as the season begins, which means that we are necessarily voting as much on last year's performance as on this year's.
I didn't vote for Dydek until last week, because I had no idea she'd be this effective (I should have known: Thibault hasn't made a bad personnel decision yet). No voter could have known on June 1 that Catchings' scoring would decline, nor that Nolan's would climb by almost 50%. And nobody in early May (when the ballot got printed) could have known that Adrian Williams would get waived, nor that Wecker (my preseason ROY pick) would lose her season after one half of one game. (Both players appeared on printed All-Star ballots.)
All-Star voting, in other words, has problems because it starts so soon-- but any cure would be worse than the disease. The league could start balloting later in June, or restrict it to Web-based voting. But both changes would reduce the total number of ballots, thus hurting the league's marketing (because it uses the ballots to collect fans' contact info).
I'd rather have silly results and more folks voting than more logical results but less fan involvement: it's the All-Star Game, not the league finals (though this year they'll likely end up in the same place).
Any egregious mistakes can be remedied by the Eastern and Western coaches, whose votes select the reserves.
