All-Star Weekend gave us the same story it always seems to give us: the women showed up, and the men did not. Team Izzy beat Team Humphrey 16-15 on a Marie McCool buzzer beater, and it was everything the PLL All-Star Game wasn't. The men finished 12-9, shot a combined 19% and 18%, and four minutes in, Marcus Holman told the country everybody was hungover. We get into why that game keeps missing and what we'd actually do to fix it.

The skills contests didn't fare much better. A busted radar gun turned the fastest shot competition into a slog, the accuracy challenge is still not actually testing accuracy, and we pitch a few ways the whole weekend could be built out into something worth attending, fireworks included.

On the field, the MVP conversation is heating up. CJ Kirst is doing things we haven't seen since Jeff Teat's record season, Dylan Ward and Brett Dobson deserve to be in that conversation too, and we argue about where the line is for guys who front-load their stats in one or two big games.

Adam Lamberti's early draft big board is out, and it sent us down a rabbit hole about the Outlaws sitting on two first round picks next year, thanks to the trade that sent Ryan Cross to Denver. We also cover the Zach Carey report on Tom Schreiber and Grant Ament, and why an Olympic year retirement is starting to feel more likely than a return.

We close out looking ahead to this weekend's slate in Chicago: five games including Utah-New York and California-Philly, plus win-or-be-in-real-trouble stakes in the WLL between Maryland and New York.

Join us in the Lax Lifers Club to keep the conversation going all week. Join Here