Team Spoon's 129-122 win over Team Coop on Saturday gave the WNBA's 30th-season celebration its clearest headline: a record All-Star crowd of 19,783 at the United Center in Chicago. The complication is that the game's best player was not the one whose name drew them there.
Jones, not Clark, controlled the game
Jonquel Jones finished with 22 points, 13 rebounds and eight assists, earning MVP honors in a win Team Spoon secured by seven. Her line was the exception in a contest that leaned heavily on offense: the two rosters combined for 127 three-point attempts across 48 minutes, and eight Team Spoon players scored in double figures. Caitlin Clark, who captained Team Spoon, finished with 17 points. Allisha Gray added 19. Marina Mabrey captained the losing side.
The WNBA's All-Star weekend split across two venues. Friday night's three-point contest and Shooting Stars competition ran at Wintrust Arena, a few miles from the United Center. Saturday's main event drew the record gate. The All-Star Game last came to Chicago in 2022, which makes the attendance mark a post-2022 data point, set against a period of measurably higher league interest.
A dunk that enters a short list
The second quarter produced the moment most likely to outlast the final score. Dominique Malonga, the 6-foot-6, 20-year-old Seattle Storm center, caught a pass from Atlanta Dream star Angel Reese and put down a dunk. The Storm confirmed Malonga became the seventh player in league history to dunk in an All-Star Game. The WNBA confirmed she is the youngest to accomplish it at the event.
Seven players across 30 seasons. The list is short enough to name.
The counterargument: an exhibition is an exhibition
A 251-point combined output in a game with 127 three-point attempts is an entertainment product, not a competitive sample. The format selects for offense, by design. Anyone drawing conclusions about individual development or league parity from Saturday's result should hold off. The critique has merit.
On balance, the case for reading Saturday positively rests on things the score cannot distort: 19,783 fans in a building that staged the game for the first time since 2022, a record that holds regardless of the margin, and distributed star output where Jones earned MVP, Reese assisted the historic dunk, and Gray finished as the game's second-leading scorer. The line to watch is whether that broader cast translates into regular-season and playoff attendance numbers. The youngest player to dunk in All-Star Game history is 20 years old.