Christine Brennan joins The Lead

Vitale was among the many who were upset about Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark being ranked as the ninth-best guard by her peers in the player voting portion of the WNBA All-Star process after ranking first in fan voting and third in media voting — and he took to X to air his grievances.

But Bueckers' 800,000 fan votes smashed Clark's WNBA record of fan votes received by a rookie, as Clark finished with 700,735 last season. Both players can be attributed with helping grow the WNBA and the attention paid to the league, as both were stars in college that have carried that over to the WNBA.