INDIANAPOLIS \u2014 Napheesa Collier\u00a0played the role of All-Star captain\u00a0perfectly.<\/p>\n
First, she made all the right\u00a0picks for her roster. Then she answered all the labour questions. And finally, she showed everyone, even the WNBA’s young guns, how to stay focused on basketball.<\/p>\n
The five-time All-Star scored a record 36 points, grabbed nine rebounds and led the aptly named\u00a0Team Collier past Team Clark 151-131\u00a0in the highest scoring All-Star Game in WNBA history. Naturally, Collier was selected the MVP.<\/p>\n
She made 13 of 16 shots, four from the specially designed AT&T logo 4-point-line that seemed perfectly aligned for Caitlin Clark, the other team captain\u00a0who didn’t play\u00a0because of a right groin injury. And it was all by design.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tried to make my team not have that many new players,” Collier said. “I’ve played with a lot of them and so it was good to get back with them, play with, like you said, some of those new players I haven’t played with before.\u201d<\/p>\n
But for Collier, this weekend in Indianapolis was about much more than a single game.<\/p>\n
The vice president of the Women’s National Basketball Players Association executive committee and a co-founder of the Unrivaled basketball league never got distracted by a demanding schedule that forced her to prioritize the WNBA’s future over adding another award to her trophy case.<\/p>\n
Collier\u00a0spent Thursday afternoon negotiating\u00a0a new collective bargaining agreement and Friday answering questions from a throng of reporters detailing the meeting. On Saturday, she shared the pregame stage with Clark for a news conference between the captains. And after the game, there were even more questions about the CBA.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I haven’t been able to forget it (Thursday’s meeting) because people won’t let us, which is amazing,\u201d Collier said. \u201cJust the awareness we’ve raised this weekend, you guys asking these questions, the fans doing the chants, that, like, gave me chills.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Collier also helped fuel the effort.<\/p>\n
She, like the other All-Stars,\u00a0wore a T-shirt\u00a0that read \u201cPay us what you owe us” during pregame warmups.<\/p>\n
Then she reinforced the message with a historic game.<\/p>\n
Collier broke the All-Star Game’s individual scoring record while her team scored a record 82 first-half points. Another of Collier’s picks, Seattle guard Skylar Diggins, became the first player with an All-Star triple-double in the same venue she led Notre Dame to the national championship game more than a decade ago.<\/p>\n
And Collier even connected with rookie Paige Bueckers, both former UConn stars, for a basket. The captain couldn’t have scripted it any better.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe set a lot of records,\u201d Collier said. \u201cSkylar had a triple-double, which is insane. It was just so fun. We had a great time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INDIANAPOLIS \u2014 Napheesa Collier\u00a0played the role of All-Star captain\u00a0perfectly. First, she made all the right\u00a0picks for her roster.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-9829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}