The 2026 WNBA All-Star Game just got its rosters. For the first time, fan votes didn’t decide who plays alongside whom. Hall of Famers Cynthia Cooper and Teresa Weatherspoon built the two squads themselves, through a live draft that scrambled the usual pairings entirely.

Indiana Pacers and Fever beat reporter Scott Agness broke down the reveal shortly after it aired on ESPN.

“Cynthia Cooper and Teresa Weatherspoon drafted teams for the WNBA All-Star game, July 25, in Chicago,” Agness wrote. “Cooper was assigned Paige Bueckers, Weatherspoon assigned Caitlin Clark. Kelsey Mitchell taken by Cooper 4th, Boston by Weatherspoon 5th. So Clark/Boston are teammates” (via Scott Agness).

That Clark-Boston pairing is exactly the kind of twist this new format was built to create. In past years, the two leading fan vote-getters served as captains and drafted their own teams. This year, a coin flip decided which GM landed Bueckers, the top vote-getter, and Cooper won it. That handed Weatherspoon the first actual pick of the draft as compensation, and she opened by taking A’ja Wilson, with Cooper countering with Breanna Stewart.

From there, the picks kept splitting up teammates in ways the old system never would have. Clark ended up alongside her own Fever teammate Aliyah Boston on Team Weatherspoon, while Kelsey Mitchell, another Fever starter, landed across the court on Team Cooper. Angel Reese went to Team Cooper as the first reserve off the board, a pick with its own layer of irony since Weatherspoon coached Reese for a season with the Chicago Sky back in 2024. Reese’s own Atlanta Dream teammates, Rhyne Howard and Allisha Gray, both ended up on Team Weatherspoon instead.

That scattershot roster construction produced a real structural gap between the two sides. Team Cooper’s 12 players come from 12 different franchises, with no pair of teammates anywhere on the roster. Team Weatherspoon, by contrast, kept three pairs intact: Clark and Boston, plus a backcourt built around existing chemistry elsewhere on the roster.

That difference is exactly what shaped how each GM explained her own approach once the picks were locked in.

There have always been foolproof strategies for the WNBA All-Star rosters 

Weatherspoon laid out her thinking in detail once the draft wrapped.

“I was truly strategizing. I just wanted to make sure that it was well-built, from playmakers to scorers to rebounders to defenders,” Weatherspoon said. “Kind of put together a well-balanced basketball team.”

She wasn’t shy about the stakes either.

“Draft strategy is to get scorers. People can put the ball in the basket, and then rebounders,” Cooper said. She wanted pace above all else. “I want them to be able to go up and down the court. We’re not playing half-court basketball. There are no plays. Let’s get it done.”

The two even traded a bit of friendly needling once their rosters were set, with Cooper firing back at her counterpart’s talk of competitiveness: “But can you score enough points?”

Cooper’s roster backs up that mindset. Bueckers, Mitchell, and Stewart give her three players built to score in bunches, while Gabby Williams adds real perimeter defense to balance the attack. Weatherspoon countered with a frontcourt trio of Wilson, Boston, and Jessica Shepard, paired with a Clark-Miles backcourt that leans on pace and playmaking rather than pure scoring.

Beyond the two rosters, the night also carries real stakes for causes off the court. The teams are playing for a $100,000 prize pool tied to the league’s 30th anniversary season, split between two Chicago-based youth sports organizations, with $70,000 going to the winning team’s charity and $30,000 to the runner-up’s. Team Coop will wear red and Team Spoon will wear blue, a nod to the league’s original 1997 color scheme.

Las Vegas coach Becky Hammon and Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve, whose teams own the league’s two best records through July 10, will lead Team Cooper and Team Weatherspoon on the sidelines. The game tips off July 25 at 8:30 p.m. ET at Chicago’s United Center, with the Three-Point Contest and Shooting Stars competition set for the night before at Wintrust Arena.