WNBA offense on the upswing Howard Megdal
Better efficiency, players’ evolution factors
If you’ve noticed additional scoring in the WNBA this year, it is not your imagination.
Offense is more prevalent across the board, not only in total scoring but in efficiency as well. And a survey of the league’s best minds (players and coaches) offers a wide variety of causes for the jump.
There is the rules change that resets the shot clock after an offensive rebound to 14, not 24. But even that would only explain a potential increase in the total number of shots and is insufficient to explain the overall jump in pace and accuracy.
“The scoring jump can be directly attributed to the players,” Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve told USA TODAY Sports. “They have worked tirelessly to achieve greatness in their individual games. Additionally, the WNBA’s presence for 20 years has created the evolution of the professional women’s basketball player — bigger, faster, stronger, more skilled.
“Lastly, I believe the shot clock reset rule change for 2016 has had an impact on scoring.”
The numbers are undeniable. Teams averaged 75.1 points per game last season. Through Tuesday’s games, that average had jumped to 82.2 per game.
But there’s more than just extra shots at play. The league’s Offensive Rating (points scored per 100 possessions), at 100.0 last season, is up to 104.6 this year. The league shot 42.5% from the field overall and 32.5% from three-point range last season, and those averages are up to 44.1% and 33.2%, respectively. This has occurred despite an increase in pace (possessions per 40 minutes) to 76.9 in 2016 from 74.5 in 2015.
“The biggest thing is that teams are getting out into transition a lot more this year,” reigning WNBA MVP Elena Delle Donne of the Chicago Sky said. “We’re discussing transition defense more than we ever have before. I think it’s just the speed of the game is going up.”
For her coach Pokey Chatman’s part, it’s an evolution that the fast-tracked Sky have been deploying for some time. As much as anything, pace-wise, this is about the rest of the league catching up to Chicago.
“I think some different teams that used to play at a slower pace, they made a concerted effort to play faster,” Chatman said.
“I think it’s a concerted effort because transition game is before teams can get their defense set, so I think people are really pushing pace a lot.”
Realistically, though, there is something deeper in the numbers.
It’s generally posited that the WNBA is getting better all the time, an article of faith among the league’s greats of yesterday and current players.
What this offensive explosion does is put numbers behind that assertion, one that isn’t in dispute among the league’s observers.
So while someone such as the New York Liberty’s Tina Charles once stood out for her ability to finish, she now finds herself in a league in which many others can keep up.
Accordingly, she has diversified her game, stretching out beyond the three-point line for the first time in any extended way and becoming a more efficient offensive player in the process.
“You have players who are emerging, players who are more efficient, better at finishing around the basket,” Charles said. “That’s what’s really important. For instance, you have Nneka Ogwumike, who’s been very, very efficient scoring this year.
That might be an understatement. Ogwumike’s true shooting percentage is 75.5% this season. No one in league history has cracked 70% in that statistic. Yet Erlana Larkins of the Indiana Fever is at 70.7% in true shooting percentage this year as well.
Ogwumike will not take sole responsibility for the dramatic upward pressure on the league’s offensive prowess either, however. Not when there were 21 different 30-point games posted by WNBA players over the league’s first 106 contests, an all-time high for the league through that number of games.