Rhyne Howard was left off one WNBA All-Stars ballot because she was listed as a guard, even though the league still expects voters to rank the best starters by position. Voting closed on Saturday, and the starter pool now turns on a format that still separates guards from forwards and centers.
Howard and the guard cutoff
The ballot split is simple and unforgiving. Voters choose four guards and six forwards or centers for WNBA All-Star starters, and the top four guards and top six frontcourt players make the team. Howard landed outside that guard group on at least one ballot, which is the direct consequence of a position system the league still uses for All-Star voting.
That creates the odd result here: a player described as one of the league's preeminent stars can still be bumped aside by the slot she occupies. The league moved to a positionless approach for first- and second-team All-Pro selections in 2022, but All-Star voting has not followed that path. That gap between the two systems is the reason Howard's status mattered on this ballot.
Voting rules and reserve picks
The mechanics are broader than starters alone. Player votes, media votes and fan votes decide the starters, while the league's 15 coaches choose the 12 reserves. Coaches must fill three guard spots, five frontcourt spots and four more players regardless of position, and they cannot vote for their own players.
The format leaves little room for a guard who is not placed cleanly in the top four. Howard's production made the omission harder to ignore: before the two Dream games after the vote was submitted, she was averaging 18.1 points, 3.2 assists and 2.6 steals while taking 3.2 3-point attempts per game. For the season, she was leading the fourth-place Dream with 18.6 points per game, 3.8 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 2.5 steals.
Boston, Reese and the frontcourt split
The same ballot logic also shapes the frontcourt. Jonquel Jones was described as a relatively easy inclusion there, while Natasha Mack was compared with Boston and Reese for the final frontcourt decision. The Mercury were plus-2.2 with Mack on the floor, while Alyssa Thomas did not have a positive net rating for the Mercury.
That is the practical issue for voters now: the All-Star starter process still treats position as a hard filter, even when the league has already made one major award vote positionless. Fans who expected pure merit to carry the day saw the opposite on Howard's ballot, and the reserve choices now rest with the 15 coaches under the same positional limits.
