The short answer
The split happened before the draft
- Team Coop anchor
- Paige Bueckers
- Team Spoon anchor
- Caitlin Clark
- What decided it
- A pre-draft coin flip
- Bueckers fan votes
- 1,045,051
- Clark fan votes
- 1,023,321
- Game date
- Saturday 25 July 2026
- US broadcast
- ABC at 8.30 pm ET
- Venue
- United Center, Chicago
The vote totals below are the official fan-ballot figures published by the WNBA.
A coin flip separated the two biggest fan vote-getters
Paige Bueckers and Caitlin Clark did not land on opposite 2026 WNBA All-Star teams because one general manager chose Bueckers over Clark. Their places were set before Cynthia Cooper and Teresa Weatherspoon made the first draft selection. The WNBA held a coin flip to decide which general manager would receive the leading player in fan voting.
Cooper won the flip, so Team Coop was assigned Bueckers, who led the fan ballot with 1,045,051 votes. Team Spoon was then assigned Clark, the second-leading fan choice with 1,023,321 votes. That guaranteed the two guards would begin on opposite sides and gave each roster a clear fan-voted centrepiece.
The coin flip did not decide every player on either roster
The pre-draft assignment only placed Bueckers and Clark. Weatherspoon then selected first from the remaining starters, while Cooper selected first from the reserves. Team Spoon used the first starter selection on A'ja Wilson. Team Coop answered with Breanna Stewart.
The general managers drafted from a pool of 22 All-Stars: 10 starters and 12 reserves. They could choose without regard to conference or position. That is why the finished teams do not resemble ordinary Eastern and Western Conference line-ups, and why a roster can contain several players who usually compete for the same conference or role.
Fan voting was important, but it did not select all ten starters by itself
Fans supplied 50 percent of the calculation used to choose the starters. Current WNBA players supplied 25 percent and a media panel supplied the remaining 25 percent. Players were ranked within guard and frontcourt groups in each voting pool, and the league averaged the weighted ranks.
Bueckers ranked first among guards in the combined result with a weighted score of 1.25. Clark received the second-highest raw fan total, but her combined guard score was 4.5 because she ranked third with media and eleventh with players. Olivia Miles finished second in the combined guard ranking. The distinction matters: Bueckers and Clark were the top two fan vote-getters, not the top two players in every voting group.
Coaches selected the reserves before the general managers drafted them
The league's 15 head coaches chose the 12 reserves. Each coach voted for three guards, five frontcourt players and four players at either position, and could not vote for players from their own team. That process created the reserve pool. Cooper and Weatherspoon then decided which All-Star roster each reserve would join.
This layered system answers three different questions. Fans, players and media helped decide the starters. Coaches chose the reserves. The two special general managers then divided those 22 All-Stars between Team Coop and Team Spoon. Treating the final rosters as a simple popularity ranking misses most of the mechanism.
Who is on Team Spoon?
Team Spoon begins with Clark and includes Wilson, Miles, Aliyah Boston, Jessica Shepard, Rhyne Howard, Allisha Gray, Jonquel Jones, Courtney Williams, Kiki Iriafen and Nneka Ogwumike. The order on the official draft table shows Clark as the assigned player, followed by Weatherspoon's selections from the starter and reserve pools.
The roster gives Team Spoon established frontcourt strength through Wilson, Boston, Jones and Ogwumike, while Clark, Miles, Gray, Howard and Williams offer several different ways to create from the perimeter. The All-Star format does not require the group to resemble a normal club rotation, so the game plan can be more flexible than a regular-season depth chart.
Who is on Team Coop?
Team Coop begins with Bueckers and includes Stewart, Kelsey Mitchell, Natasha Howard, Gabby Williams, Angel Reese, Marina Mabrey, Dominique Malonga, Kelsey Plum, Jackie Young and Sonia Citron. Cooper's first choice from the remaining starters was Stewart, while her first reserve selection was Reese.
Bueckers and Mitchell bring scoring and playmaking to a group that can also use Plum, Young, Mabrey and Williams in the backcourt. Stewart, Howard, Reese and Malonga give the roster a varied frontcourt. As with Team Spoon, the list is a one-game All-Star construction rather than a claim that every player has one fixed position.
The coaches were assigned through regular-season records
Becky Hammon and Cheryl Reeve earned the two coaching places because Las Vegas and Minnesota had the league's best records through games played on 10 July. Both clubs were 16 and 6, so the head-to-head result put Hammon in the top position.
Hammon was assigned to coach the team containing the leading fan vote-getter, which was Bueckers and Team Coop. Reeve was assigned to Clark and Team Spoon. The coaching split therefore followed the same fan-vote anchors established before the roster draft.
The red and blue uniforms point back to the WNBA's first season
The league chose Cooper and Weatherspoon as special general managers during its 30th season. Cooper won four championships and four Finals MVP awards with the Houston Comets. Weatherspoon was a five-time All-Star and two-time Defensive Player of the Year, best known for her years with the New York Liberty.
Team Coop will wear red and Team Spoon will wear blue. The WNBA says those colours recall the league's original 1997 palette. The names therefore do more than identify two temporary rosters. They connect the 2026 game with two defining players from the league's earliest years.
The game carries a $100,000 charity prize pool
The teams are competing for a $100,000 prize pool that benefits two Chicago organisations working to keep girls involved in sport. Team Coop is playing for Angels Athletics, while Team Spoon is supporting Girls in the Game.
The organisation connected with the winning team will receive $70,000 and the runner-up organisation will receive $30,000. That means the competition has a result beyond the exhibition itself, while both participating organisations are guaranteed support.
When and where to watch the 2026 WNBA All-Star Game
The game is at United Center in Chicago on Saturday 25 July. ABC's US broadcast begins at 8.30 pm Eastern time, following WNBA Countdown at 8 pm. That is 7.30 pm Central in Chicago, 5.30 pm Pacific and 10.30 am AEST on Sunday 26 July for viewers on Australia's east coast.
The central surprise is easy to remember. Bueckers and Clark were not separated by a dramatic draft-night rejection. A coin flip distributed the first and second fan vote-getters before the selections began. Everything after that was a roster-building exercise around two players the fans had already placed at the centre of the event.
Sources and further reading
This article was written for Curiosity Desk. We do not copy other publishers or invent quotes. If a material error is found, we correct it openly.
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