You know what time it is, WNBA fans.
The All-Star starters were announced Thursday, revealing where fans, players and media ranked the league’s top stars at the midpoint of the season.
Which means everyone gets to indulge their sports fan reflexes.
Decry injustice. Settle old scores. Expose fools. Invalidate other people’s perspectives.
Or maybe, instead of signing up for another round of social media jousting, you’d rather stretch your introspective muscles.
All-Star debates can be a great opportunity to reflect on ourselves.
This was my second year as an All-Star voter. I’m still new enough to the process that it can feel imposing, but far enough in to want the ballot to feel authentic. Like a true Alissa Hirsh of the Chicago Sun-Times ballot, not just a random media member trying to fit in.
So I decided to lean into my biases.
These were the ones I used:
Hirsh Bias No. 1: The best players from the top six teams were favored. Players from the bottom nine had to clear an extremely high bar. Basketball is a team sport, so let’s reward team success.
Hirsh Bias No. 2: Efficient scorers were favored. High-volume scorers with low or mediocre shooting percentages were treated with more suspicion. All the best scorers in the W can put points on the board. I wanted to reward the elite group that does it efficiently.
Hirsh Bias No. 3: Try to represent as many teams as possible. The top teams are really good this year. I wanted my ballot to reflect that.
Now, for the reveal of where my ballot differed from the actual starters.
The All-Star guards are Paige Bueckers, Olivia Miles, Caitlin Clark and Kelsey Mitchell.
I had Bueckers, Miles, Kelsey Plum and Rhyne Howard.
The All-Star frontcourt starters are A’ja Wilson, Breanna Stewart, Jessica Shepard, Gabby Williams, Natasha Howard and Aliyah Boston.
I had Angel Reese instead of Boston. The rest were the same.
Overall, I think my framework served me well. It kept the process simple and fun. And I didn’t stray too far from how the media, fans and players saw things.
But it wasn’t perfect. Like all biases, I think they narrowed my focus at the expense of larger truths.
Leaving off Clark and Boston, in particular, showed that my bias toward the top teams was too strong. Mediocre record or not, I should have found space for at least one of them — Clark for her court vision, Boston for her all-around impact — though I’m still not completely sure where.
I also realized later that I had been using another bias without fully recognizing it: I was judging players against their own potential, not just against their peers.
Plum stuck out to me in part because she is putting together layers of her game that have developed over years. She looks like a player at or near the peak of her powers.
That is worth celebrating. I don’t regret the pick.
But I also don’t want to leave off deserving players who are having great seasons simply because I think they can play better.
So what did I learn from all of this?
On the surface, being more aware of my biases should make me a better voter next year.
On a deeper level, the process also helped me see different parts of myself more clearly.
I can see myself wanting to trust my intuition more, but still building analytical structures to fall back on.
I can see the former point guard in me, valuing winning and efficiency. I can see the developing journalist who wants the ballot to be representative and generous.
I can also see that in holding great players to the standard of not just playing well, but playing up to their fullest potential, I was doing something I wrote about recently: applying pressure.
There it was again, the tendency to bring pressure in place of sentiments that don’t come as naturally, but are actually what I’m looking for:
Recognition. Appreciation. Even love.
At its best, those are the things sports give us the opportunity to practice.
We should take that opportunity more often.