Brittney Griner Makes Her Triumphant Return to the WNBA All-Star Lineup

WNBA fans have welcomed Brittney Griner back to the league with open arms. The Phoenix Mercury center has been celebrated and enthusiastically cheered at every arena. That love fest continued with All-Star voting, as the center has been named a nine-time All-Star and one of the 2023 AT&T WNBA All-Star Game starters. BG is joined by 2023 No. 1 draft pick, Aliyah Boston of the Indiana Fever. The standout rookie reacted to her first All-Star appearance on Twitter, writing, “Another blessing. God is so good all the time.”

The Las Vegas Aces’ A’ja Wilson and the New York Liberty’s Breanna Stewart are repeating as captains. Wilson garnered 95,860 fan votes, while Stewart received 87,586, according to Just Women’s Sports. All-Star starters are “determined by a combination of fan voting (50 percent), media voting (25 percent) and current player voting (25 percent).” Once the remaining All-Stars are chose by the league’s head coaches, the captains will choose their teams on the WNBA All-Star Team Selection Special, airing Saturday, July 8 at 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT on ESPN.

Though they’ve been through this before, Wilson and Stewart will have an especially difficult time choosing their starters from this year’s selections. The Los Angeles Sparks’ Nneka Ogwumike is making her eighth All-Star appearance; the Aces’ Chelsea Gray and the Seattle Storm’s Jewell Loyd are five-time All-Stars; the Dallas Wings’ Arike Ogunbowale makes her third appearance; and Las Vegas’ Jackie Young and Dallas’ Satou Sabally are back in the game for the second time.

Missing from this list, but pretty much a lock to be chosen as a reserve, is the Connecticut Sun’s triple-double machine Alyssa Thomas. On Sunday, she got her second one in five days, leading her team to a 96-72 win over the Chicago Sky. Even though she wasn’t picked as a starter, there’s still a good chance that Thomas will end up starting. In every All-Star Game, someone withdraws due to injury or illness, and a replacement is put in the starting lineup.

As for the rest of the reserves, we will likely see names like the Liberty’s Sabrina Ionescu; Connecticut’s DeWanna Bonner; the Atlanta Dream’s Rhyne Howard; and because I think it might be a legal requirement, Phoenix’s Diana Taurasi.

The 2023 AT&T WNBA All-Star Game airs live Saturday, July 15 at 8:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. PT on ABC.