The Indiana Fever will have three starters in the 2026 WNBA All-Star Game. That is a franchise first, and it tells you everything about how far this team has come in two years.
Caitlin Clark, Aliyah Boston, and Kelsey Mitchell were all announced as starters for the July 25 event at Chicago’s United Center. They join a starting lineup headlined by defending MVP A’ja Wilson and Rookie of the Year winner Paige Bueckers.
Clark, in her third season, is playing the best basketball of her career. She ranks fifth in the league in scoring at 21.2 points a game and second in assists at 8.2. She has already reached 1,000 career points, 250 rebounds, and 250 assists in just 54 games. That broke the previous record of 62 games held by Diana Taurasi. Whatever the ceiling on Clark’s career looked like when she was drafted, she is on pace to blow past it.
The voting story is where things get interesting. Bueckers led all players with 1,045,051 fan votes. Clark finished second with 1,023,321. Wilson was third. That is the fan side. On the player vote, however, Clark finished 11th. Not fifth. Not eighth. Eleventh. Only 85 of the WNBA’s 180 players even submitted a ballot.
That gap between fan love and player recognition has been a theme of Clark’s career. She has been the most impactful commercial figure in the sport since her Iowa days. Some of her peers have grumbled about the attention. Some of them, quietly, have voted accordingly.
None of that has affected her play. Clark is having an efficient, well-rounded season with better shot selection, tighter turnover numbers, and elite playmaking. The Fever are 20-8 and are legitimately talking about a top-two seed in the East.
Aliyah Boston is finally getting the postseason recognition her play has demanded. She is averaging 18 and 8 with more midrange touches than ever. Coach Stephanie White has redesigned the offense to feature both Clark and Boston as scoring threats, and it has unlocked another gear for the entire team.
Kelsey Mitchell is the sneaky third starter. She has always been a bucket. This year, playing off Clark’s gravity, her efficiency has jumped noticeably. She is a career-year scoring threat and a legitimate All-Star pick regardless of the Fever storyline.
The All-Star Game itself will be a moment. Chicago will be packed. The TV numbers will be big. And three of the starters will be wearing Fever gold when they walk out of the tunnel.
Indiana went from a struggling franchise to the face of women’s basketball in the span of 24 months. This All-Star selection is the on-court receipt.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
