Leslie selected to start in All-Star Game

Sparks center Lisa Leslie was selected by fans to start in the WNBA All-Star game for the fifth time in her career, on Tuesday.

Leslie has been injured for all but five of the Sparks 11 games this season and isn't sure yet whether she'll be able to play in the July 25th game at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut. Before the season, she announced that this season would be her final year in the WNBA.

``It's just such an honor to be voted in by the fans,'' Leslie said. ``I'm pretty anxious to get back out there. It's obviously not my ideal finish, being injured in my last year. But I'm just trying to look at the positive side and staying hopeful that it'll be about how we finish the year, not how we started it.''

Leslie received 80,748 votes in the fan voting. Indiana's Tamika Catchings was the leading vote-getter with 94,316.

Leslie, the WNBA's leader in career points and rebounds, is no stranger to the WNBA All-Star game having been selected as a Western Conference All-Star eight times. In the inaugural WNBA All-Star game in 1999, Leslie led the Western Conference All-Stars to victory and won the first of three All-Star game MVP awards. She later won the award back to back, as a reserve in 2001 and as a starter in 2002.

Of Leslie's eight All-Star selections, she has been named to the starting lineup five times, (1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009), and has career All-Star game averages of 14.6 points, 6.9 rebounds and 1.4 blocks.

She will start for the Western Conference alongside Seattle's Swin Cash, Sue Bird and Lauren Jackson, and San Antonio's Becky Hammon.

The Eastern Conference starters are Indiana's Katie Douglas and Catchings, Washington's Alana Beard, and Chicago's Sylvia Fowles and Candice Dupree.