Dallas Wings Liz Cambage, left, and Skylar Diggins-Smith have been elected to the WNBA’s 2018 All-Star team. (Tammye Nash/Dallas Voice)
Dallas Wings stars Skylar Diggins-Smith and Liz Cambage have been elected to the Verizon WNBA All-Star 2018 team.
Diggins-Smith, Dallas’ star guard, has been elected to the All-Star team for the fourth year in a row. She has made the team each of her years in the WNBA except for her rookie year. This ties her with Cheryl Ford and Deanna Nolan for the most in franchise history.
Diggins-Smith is currenly average 19.5 points per game, which puts her in the league’s top 10. And her 6.5 assists-per-game average puts her in the No. 3 spot in the league. She posted a career-best 35 points and 12 rebounds on June 8 at Indiana; it was her second 30-plus-points game of the season. And a month later — on July 8 — she became the franchise leader for most 20-plus- and 30-plus-points games 54 20-plus-points games and eight 30-plus-points games.
Diggins-Smith is also leading her team in minutes played this season, with 34.2.
This is Cambage’s second time being named as an all-star — she was first chosen in 2013 — and it comes when she is playing at the top of her game. Earlier today, she broke the WNBA record for most points in a single game — 53 — during the Wings’ win over the New York Liberty. She is averaging 21.4 points and 9.2 rebounds per game, earning her the No. 2 spot in the league in both stats.
Cambage has turned in nine double-doubles this season. Today’s game showed her at her best yet with 53 points, 10 rebounds and a 77.2 field goal percentage, surpassing Michael Jordan’s NBA regular season showcase performance of 50 points, 10 rebounds and 75 field goal percentage
is currently holding one of the best performances in her career leading the Wings in scoring with 19.9 points per game and 9.1 rebounds per game. Cambage has reached career heights for total points in a game three times this season, with her most recent performance of 53 points this afternoon against the Liberty. Cambage becomes the new league leader for most points scored in a single game and franchise, behind Riquna Williams’ 51 points, which occurred in 2013. She has also registered nine double-doubles for the season with her best occurring today with the 53 points, 10 rebounds and a 77.2 field goal percentage, which surpasses Michael Jordan’s NBA regular season performance of 50 points, 10 rebounds and a 75 percent field goal percentage.
This year’s all-star team captains are Washington Mystics’ Delle Donne and Los Angeles Sparks’ Candace Parker. The two of them will choose their rosters from the remaining pool of 20 players elected to the team. The rosters will be revealed start of ESPN2’s telecast of a game between Washington and Dallas (tip-off at 7 p.m. CST).
The team captains will confer with the All-Star head coaches, Dan Hughes of Seattle and Sandy Brondello of Phoenix, to decide on the starting lineups, which will be revealed July 27 on ESPN2 (6 p.m. ET) during a live telecast of the WNBA All-Star Welcome Reception in Minnesota.
For the whole All-Star roster, visit here.
