Team Spoon and Team Coop meet in the WNBA All-Star Game tonight. Tipoff is set for 8:30 p.m. EDT at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois. The game will be broadcast live on ABC.
Team Spoon is favored by -3.5 on the spread, with the over/under set at 277.5 (-112o / -105u). Team Spoon is a -172 favorite to win outright, while Team Coop is +140 to pull off the upset.
Let's get into my Team Spoon vs Team Coop predictions and WNBA All-Star Game picks.
Team Spoon vs. Team Coop Odds, Pick
| Team Spoon Odds | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spread | Total | Moneyline |
-3.5 -130 | 275.5 -114o / -114u | -158 |
| Team Coop Odds | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spread | Total | Moneyline |
+3.5 -102 | 275.5 -114o / -114u | +134 |
- Team Spoon vs Team Coop Spread: Spoon -3.5 (-130), Coop +3.5 (-102)
- Team Spoon vs Team Coop Over/Under: 275.5 (-114o / -114u)
- Team Spoon vs Team Coop Moneyline: Spoon -158, Coop +134
- Team Spoon vs Team Coop Best Bet: Team Coop +3.5 or Better
Team Spoon vs Team Coop
This year's All-Star Game looks different by design. As part of the WNBA's 30th-anniversary celebration, the league scrapped the player-captain draft entirely and handed roster control to two Hall of Famers, Cynthia Cooper and Teresa Weatherspoon, serving as honorary general managers.
Paige Bueckers and Caitlin Clark, the top two vote-getters, were assigned to opposite teams by coin flip before the draft, and Cooper and Weatherspoon took it from there. The result is two genuinely balanced rosters rather than a "stars pick their friends" affair, which is part of why this is shaping up as a real, two-sided line instead of the lopsided numbers these games sometimes produce.
Team Coop Preview
Team Coop, coached by Aces head coach Becky Hammon, is built around scoring in bunches. Bueckers was the top overall pick in the draft and headlines the starting five off a season averaging 20.9 points and 6.2 assists while leading Dallas to a 17-9 record.
She's joined up front by Breanna Stewart, who's providing a three-level scoring threat of her own at 21.1 points and 8.6 rebounds a night, and by Kelsey Mitchell, who's been red-hot lately; she dropped 33 on the Liberty in her last outing and sits at 23.3 points per game on excellent efficiency for the season.
Gabby Williams and Natasha Howard round out the starting group. Off the bench, this team only gets more dangerous: Angel Reese, Dominique Malonga, Kahleah Copper, Jackie Young and Sonia Citron give Hammon plenty of depth, and Marina Mabrey, who tied the league's single-game scoring record with a 53-point outburst on June 25, gives this side a legitimate microwave scorer to bring off the pine.
Top to bottom, it's a roster stocked with shooters, which matters in exactly the kind of loose, defense-optional setting an All-Star Game provides.
Team Spoon Preview
Team Spoon, coached by Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve, was built with a different philosophy: size and two-way talent over pure shot-making. A'ja Wilson leads the starting unit and leads the entire WNBA in scoring at 25.6 points, adding 9.6 rebounds and 3.5 stocks (steals plus blocks) a game, and she's the biggest reason oddsmakers made this side the favorite.
Clark starts alongside her, bringing the usual blend of table-setting and deep shooting that's defined her season; she's hitting 34.5% from 3 at the break and connected on 48.1% of her attempts over her final three games before the layoff. Aliyah Boston and Jessica Shepard add frontcourt size next to them.
At the same time, rookie Olivia Miles, in the midst of one of the best debut seasons in league history, gives the group a second ball-handler who can also finish above the rim.
The bench continues that two-way theme rather than leaning purely into scoring; Rhyne Howard, Allisha Gray, Jonquel Jones, Courtney Williams, Kiki Iriafen and Nneka Ogwumike are all do-everything types more than pure microwave scorers, a subtly different construction than what Team Coop put together.
Injury Report
There are a couple of injury notes worth knowing before tip-off, and they both fall on Team Coop's side. Paige Bueckers had a scary collision with Nneka Ogwumike on July 19 that sent her to the floor and forced her out of Dallas's following game; the team says she avoided a concussion and is instead dealing with soreness, but her workload for Saturday remains genuinely uncertain.
Angel Reese, a Team Coop reserve, left her most recent game after her knee buckled on a jump-stop. She was able to walk off under her own power, but her status for the exhibition is also unresolved.
Team Spoon's two headliners, Wilson and Clark, enter the weekend healthy.
Team Spoon vs Team Coop Prediction
Our PRO model projects a two-point Team Spoon win, while the market has opened with Team Spoon as a 4.5-point favorite.
Why might the market be overpricing Team Spoon? Size and two-way talent translate well to a normal, competitive NBA or WNBA game, but All-Star Games are a different animal.
Possessions are quick, defense is an afterthought, and the team with more pure shot-makers tends to keep pace even against a "deeper" or "better" roster on paper. Team Coop's construction, headlined by Bueckers, Stewart, Mitchell and Mabrey off the bench, is built exactly for that environment.
A roster full of shooters in a game where nobody is being guarded closely tends to keep the score close regardless of who the "better" team is on a given Tuesday in the regular season.
Best Bet: Team Coop +3.5 or Better
