First-timers Kayla Thornton, Gabby Williams top six more necessary WNBA All-Star reserves

The 10 starters for the 2025 WNBA All-Star Game are set. And these six players absolutely should be reserves.

The six other reserves? The gals below have shown that they deserve to make the midseason trip to Indianapolis.

Kayla Thornton, forward, Golden State Valkyries

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The Valkyries don’t have a star? Kayla Thornton, just like the rest of the gang in Golden State, is proving prognostications wrong.

Thornton has not just brought championship-winning experience to the Bay; she’s also offered All-Star level play. She’s showing she’s more than just a heart, hustle and dirty work kind of player (although she still does all that), but also a productive, two-way force capable of captaining her team to wins. Thornton’s 15 points per game clears her previous career high, achieved in 2019, by almost five points. Her nearly seven boards and 1.6 steals per game also are career bests.

Gabby Williams, forward, Seattle Storm

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Edwin Garcia already went deep on Williams’ excellent season. Her first All-Star selection should be signed, sealed and delivered.

Even though Williams’ unsustainably efficient shooting has tailed off, she’s still posting a career-high 13.3 points per game, which she achieves as a now-credible threat from behind the arc, with nearly two made 3s per game, and as a terror in transition, where she’s an automatic two points. Then, there’s the other side of the ball. Already one of the best defenders in the W, she’s even better this season, swiping a league-leading 2.6 steals per game.

Brionna Jones, forward, Atlanta Dream

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Jones is Atlanta’s surefire second All-Star. There’s little style or sizzle to her game. Just a ton of substance.

A traditional big, Jones still has established her niche in Dream head coach Karl Smesko’s modernized offensive system, even through her experimentation behind the arc has not been reliably realized. Instead, she’s doing what she did during her eight seasons with the Connecticut Sun—just better. Breezy is an efficient low-post scorer, who also takes care of the glass. She’s pulling down over eight rebounds per game, including a career-high 3.3 offensive boards, the second-best mark in the league.

Rhyne Howard, guard, Atlanta Dream

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However, the Dream are deserving of three All-Stars, as Howard is having the best season of a career that already has earned her a pair of All-Star selections.

The scoring efficiency is not great, but the all-round impact is. That’s because she’s complemented her scoring production with enhanced playmaking, dishing a career-high 4.7 assists per game. That playmaking extends to the defensive end, where she’s tallying 1.6 steals and almost a block per game. Her effort on the boards is resulting in a career-best 5.2 rebounds per game. Atlanta asks a lot of Howard, and she delivers. As long as her current shoulder injury does not linger, she should be in Indy.

Angel Reese, forward, Chicago Sky

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The seemingly infectious instinct to critique what Reese can’t do (or can’t do well enough according to the absurdly high expectations levied on her) risks clouding all she can do, and does do, for the Sky.

Based on the famous saying, “No rebounds, no rings,” Reese is bejeweled, a generational rebounder who is obliterating the league’s boarding records. She ends and extends possessions with her work on the glass, a necessary feature for a Sky team that struggles on both ends of the floor. She’s the league’s rebounding leader, and the only player averaging a double-double. She has 10 of them on the season, in addition to a triple-double. That’s an All-Star resume.

Jackie Young, guard, Las Vegas Aces

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Yes, A’ja Wilson needs help, and Young is doing her best to provide it. (Although, the Aces’ most recent game, a bad loss to the Indiana Fever, is an untimely example.) While scoring less efficiently than her prior All-Star campaigns, Young is still a reliable source of production, tallying 17.3 points per game. She’s also generating a career-high 4.2 trips to the line per game, while maintaining a defensive playmaking presence with 1.2 steals per contest.

Young’s case might be the shakiest of any potential reserves, but, if she was not being evaluated against the absolutely elite standard she and the Aces previously reached, there would likely be little question about her All-Star worthiness.

Honorable mention: Jonquel Jones, center, New York Liberty

Jones has appeared in just nine games, limited to nine minutes in the ninth contest, a loss to the Phoenix Mercury in which she suffered the ankle injury that has since kept her on the sidelines. However, if Caitlin Clark, who also has played in only nine games, is an All-Star starter, an honor she earned based on fan and media votes, Jones deserves heavy consideration, despite the time she has missed.

Because when she’s played, the Liberty have been unstoppable. Her numbers might not be eye-popping (12.1 points and 9.6 rebounds per game), but she makes the Liberty pop. In the eight games in which she played at least 10 minutes, New York is undefeated. In the 206 total minutes she’s been on the floor, the Liberty have outscored opponents by 127 points, sporting an offensive rating of 113.1 and a defensive rating of 83.7. And the Liberty’s struggles without her—with just two wins compared to four losses—might be the best evidence for her All-Star case.