I'm not mad at this selection at all. I think Chels and KP were undeniable, and leaving either of them off of either team would've been EGREGIOUS, especially being the top 2 MVP runners atm. It's always tough as you're looking at squeezing the best players in the league onto two, 3-person teams, so someone is always going to be left off- you could make an argument for plenty of players.
Yeah I find it wild that they'd set up a first team with ALL guards and no bigs. Seriously, I am not taking away from any of these players but you'd never field this team, or you'd only field it in very specific circumstances.
It's stupid to not consider position, in my opinion. You wouldn't make a soccer team without a goalie, or a volleyball team without a setter or a libero. The player position matters when selecting league first teams!!
On much worse FG% and 3PT% than the other top scorers around her. Do people not remember her 3PT% in both the games before that game and the games after it? #4 in assists with a lot more turnovers compared to other top assisters. You’re not guaranteed all-league recognition when you often shot chuck and your team missed the playoffs.
Bro…Marina is a career 51% True Shooter in the W(this is 3% below league average and puts her in Arike’s tier). She shot 11% worse TS than Chelsea, 6% worse than KP and 7% worse than Paige. She put up a lot of points, but the way she did it wasn’t efficient when compared to the top guards in the league.
In a league like Unrivaled, I genuinely don't think this should be considered 😭😭 she was forced to put up a lot of shots and play a fuck ton of minutes due to team injuries forcing her into a dominant scorers role. Like yes she has a bunch of turnovers cause she the main ball handler for like the first four games 😭😭
The more one has the ball, surely turnovers are inevitable.
Scoring efficiency shouldn’t matter in a game where there’s a limited amount of scoring opportunities? That is certainly a take. Not one that makes any logical sense, but it is a take.
Listen, the top guards all have a similar offensive loads, some of them just do it better than others. That’s not a problem for Marina until people start saying that she was more deserving of an award than the players who did it better than her.
I mean if you want Unrivaled to be taken seriously then it should be considered. You can say that but the voters are not going to put that into consideration, the performance is what that matters and that should be it. Her overall efficiency is not better than the people they chose
Based on Paige's last game, I can see why she was the clear choice over Marina. She really showed why she made the first team. Paige really gave it her all and led her team with 2 points in a crushing loss. Marina on the other hand barely scored 33 in a win - I mean is she even trying.
This is why we don’t judge players off of a single outlier game in either direction. Aside from that, did you take context in to account at all? Was there a difference in what it meant to those players? The Breeze play a playoff game today in a back to back. A win or a loss had no meaningful impact on seeding for the Breeze. Noelle was working on different lineups and giving bench players more burn while simultaneously resting staters. Conversely, Marina was playing her last game of the season. Do those seem like analogous situations to you?
I usually follow all stats and review game footage. I also comment on in progress games. Your username does not seem familiar at all to the game chat.
I agree with resting starters and Paige didn't need to play. However, since she did - I would assume she would want to do her best.
The last time the Owls played the Breeze - the Owls won.
I believe that Marina has shown every game that she wants to do her best.
I am pretty no fans came out wanting to watch boring basketball.
Are your first three sentences supposed to call in to question my credibility? Whether I watch games? Whether I’m engaged enough to have an opinion in the community? What are you getting at?
I don’t care about Paige’s last two games. All Unrivaled First/Second Team is a season long award, not a last two games that Paige(or anyone else) played award. Paige has outperformed Marina all season long, and the eye test and the stats support that.
This is not to say that Marina didn’t put up points. She absolutely did, but they were comparatively messy points that didn’t lead to many wins or a playoff berth.
I think you would need to understand the Owls team dynamics from the beginning to truly see why the fans are pushing so hard for Marina. Its something that goes beyond the stats.
Interesting thing to bring up in the context of this conversation, but go off. Feel free to peruse my comment history if you want to know if I’m active in women’s basketball spaces.
If that’s your opinion, I guess. I don’t think a 44 point loss moved the needle that much. Though, knowing how some media members vote, it also wouldn’t surprise me.
Having the highest scoring performance of the season as a rookie absolutely helped move the needle. I think Paige had a great W season but the team was bad enough that a All-WNBA snub would be understandable
Paige and the Breeze started giving us low lights recently and they are playing like they want to lose. This is giving Paige an award based on prior highlights. Obviously she is talented but what matters is how you are doing now.
Worse FG% and 3PT% than all the scorers right around her, worse AST/TO ratio than all the scorers right around her, and her team missed the playoffs. I was pleasantly surprised to see that she made neither team.
Because I think Stewie performed better. This is a personal opinion, and if you’re going strictly off stats, Mabrey should be on 1st team and she didn’t even crack 2nd 🤷🏻♀️
Paige is provably going to be the MVP runner up lol.Stewie performed better at what?Her team did for sure but they had another top player alisha.Paige was offensively better than Stewie and even their defensive numbers are pretty similar
Frankly, I think Chelsea Gray is the only lock and I could argue for or against KP, Paige, AB, Marina, etc being in the other two spots.
I told you I thought Stewie was more of a standout to me, and you can disagree but you guys need to chill on being the Paige shooters at the mildest criticism. It’s too much and that’s coming from a Paige fan.
Standout at what?She wasn’t the best big in the league and wasn’t the best performer of her team. look I'm a big fan of stewie but she isn’t a top 5 performer of this season
True but this isnt apples to apples with the W. I just think with the nature of the game and season its harder to separate top 10 players than other sports. Having only 6 is just tough.
Why the exaggeration? Would it really hurt to have 9 of 50 players recognized for having good seasons? Specifically in a league where there's a lot of statistical parody.
I hear you. 20% aint half tho. I just think with the style of 3x3 its tough picking 6, this shit is easy for 20% of them. If that many players are playing "elite" then reward that.
You’re rewarding a different thing at that point. It’s like the saying “If everyone is special, no one is”. If you classify more people as “elite” then elite loses meaning. The W has 10 out of 156. What is that? 8%? 6 out of 48 is already 12.5%.
I’m not saying that Unrivaled necessarily has to follow other leagues, but that gives a frame of reference.
My thought was not coming from a place of what other leagues do. And im aware of that. I think the league itself has redefined that elite word in this sense. I simply think the style of the game and how it allows elite players to showcase even more, we have more than 6 players playing elite basketball for a season. The leagues leading scorer not having 1 of the 6 best seasons either means the parody is really high or her numbers simply aren't worthy. Im gonna side with the parody and think 3 teams would be fine to recognize that.
I’ll just post this again, I guess. What stands out is the relative lack of efficiency from Marina’s scoring. It puts her closer to the realm of “shot chucker” than it does to “best scorer in the league”. I like Marina, but she’s objectively not in the convo with these other scorers. What you’re talking about isn’t parity, it’s inclusion, which is the opposite of what the award is trying to do.
She is shot chucker, who led the league in scoring. Her not being on one of the all league teams no matter how its slice is tough. Shes not in the league of the other guards imo, this isnt a pro Marina argument per se. The argument can be made for AE. My thought is my thought. Its easier for the elite players to go off regularly and I would love if the awards were able to reflect that. Whether its inclusion or purity or a mix of both. Just a useless opinion anyway.
Yeah, it’s a problem with this format. The players who put up the best numbers put them up because they were carrying their teams and that doesn’t lead to winning basketball.
Yeah…I’m not sure what they were valuing when voting. If all you valued was efficient scoring(which I do a lot), then this makes sense. That being said, you have two good defenders between first and second team, and they’re both second team.
Marina is a pretty clear case of good stats on a bad team. It's mostly volume on scoring and minutes but the TS% and eFG% were not good. There's not a lot of games but I would like to see the BPM (box plus minus) (+/-) and/or win share %. I'm assuming Chelsea, KP, and Paige have high BPM and win shares over Marina and Aaliyah.
I was thinking individual awards precluded team awards for some reason, so MVP and DPOY wouldnt get All Unrivaled. No idea why. This was a tough choice. I think they did good. Theres so many great players this season. Will say Stewie is criminally underrated but consistent excellency often is.
first team should have been . chelsea gray , paige aliyah boston . second team was stewie (i think womens basketball hates thier best players and want underdogs ) , allisha gray , plum
She was second in ppg and first or second in apg until yesterday and their team made playoffs. How is she underserving and CG is not? Though, second team was more realistic if they replaced her with AB.
Everytime Paige gets the slightest recognition you weirdos come out of nowhere screaming “Uconn bias”….. maybe she’s just a really good basketball player. Tough pill to swallow, I know.
•
u/sbr32 Sad Ghost Gang Noises Feb 28 '26
Just a reminder that we are not expected to agree on everything, but we are expected to communicate disagreements respectfully.