Caitlin Clark being left off one voter's ballot for the All-WNBA First Team is a head-scratcher, to say the least. We're talking about a player who averaged 19.2 points, led the league in assists at 8.4 per game, and hit 122 threes in her rookie season.
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And yet, here we are again, asking how this happens.
This marks the second time Clark has been denied a unanimous honor, following the equally baffling Rookie of the Year vote where, again, just one voter went against the grain.
The statistical case for Clark is ironclad, but apparently, there's at least one person out there who sees it differently. It's one thing to debate a player's place on an award ballot; it's another to omit them entirely.
Some are now starting to question if this is more about a protest than an honest evaluation of her game. And with no transparency in the WNBA voting process, it's hard to know for sure.
The league doesn't release who voted for whom, leaving fans, analysts, and maybe even Clark herself in the dark.
At some point, the WNBA will need to address this if they want to avoid the controversy that follows. The league is growing, and with it, so is the expectation of accountability.
If you're going to leave a player like Clark off the ballot, you better have a good reason — and right now, we just don't know what that reason is.
Until the WNBA makes the voting process more transparent, questions like these will continue to linger.
