Analyzing the growing gap between best and worst WNBA teams

10 years ago the WNBA had a lot of parity but currently the top teams are blowing away the rest of the field

Photo courtesy Chris Poss

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We have nearly reached the midpoint in the WNBA season, which means we have enough data to see trends and analyze the performances from teams and players without having to qualify everything with, “it’s still early.”

So I took advantage of the growing data set to look deeper into the W’s parity, break down the issue with All-Star fan voting and look at the state of two struggling squads. Enjoy…

Strength of schedule causing some wild results 

ESPN tweeted out a stat that the last time the Indiana Fever won four games in a row was 2015 – the year they reached the WNBA Finals and lost to the Minnesota Lynx. That stat is pretty mind-boggling and telling about where the Fever’s franchise has been over the last decade. It also made me think about how strength of opponent is influencing what we think about teams and players on a nightly basis because the gap between good and bad in the W is so large. 

The combined record of the Fever’s opponents in their last five wins is 23-51 (.310 win percentage). Contrast that to their 0-5 start to the 2024 season in which they played the Sun, Liberty and Storm, clubs that are combined 63-16 (.794 win percentage). 

To their credit the Fever have found more ways to get Aliyah Boston and Kelsey Mitchell involved offensively with Boston posting 19.5 points per game on 68.0% shooting from the field over the last four games and Mitchell scoring 17 or more points in each contest with a 58.0% field-goal percentage in their winning stretch. But we have to grade on a curve here. The last time they played a good team, head coach Christie Sides benched her starters when they were down 30 points. 

The next stretch of games will really tell us if Indiana has improved or if they still belong in the bottom tier as their start to the season suggested. They are set to travel to Seattle, Phoenix and Las Vegas. After that they get one game against Washington and one against Dallas mixed in between Phoenix twice, Minnesota twice and Seattle. For those counting at home, that’s two games against struggling teams between June 27 and August 24. 

Is the WNBA always this way? Are the best teams always worlds better than the worst? Not always to this extreme. There are three teams outscoring the competition by at least 8.0 points per game. Going back to 2008 I could not find another example of that happening. 

I looked at the average point differential of a top four team and bottom four team through the years and here’s what I got: 

Holy moly. The gap between the best and worst teams has doubled over the last 10 years and the only year as extreme as 2024 was the Wubble season in which they only played 22 games. 

The gap might even grow because the Aces are back at full strength with Chelsea Gray back in the mix. 

There are a few theories about why this is happening. One of them might be that teams are putting more focus into rebuilding and playing young players more minutes or in some cases Bumbling for Bueckers. An example might be Phoenix trading draft capital for a veteran star while Chicago elected a youth movement rather than trying to barely make the playoffs with Kahleah Copper. Also the “super team” concept of star veterans banding together like in New York or Seattle leaves everyone else in the dust. 

The difference between good and bad clubs means that we have to look closer at team/player streaks to determine whether it’s better performance or schedule that’s causing the uptick or downturn. It also means that players stuck on the bad teams might have to be evaluated differently because they will not get many opportunities to shine as they are being bludgeoned by the good teams on a nightly basis. Imagine if Alanna Smith of the Lynx was playing for Washington, for example. Her evaluation might look quite a bit different. 

What All-Star fan voting got right and wrong

The WNBA released its first round of fan voting results this week. Thank goodness it’s only the early returns so the voters still have time to redeem themselves. 

I know what you’re thinking: Who cares, it’s just an All-Star Game, let the fans get who they want. Fair enough (and yes, I’m aware that it’s only 50% of the vote) but All-Star appearances are meaningful to players’ legacies. Sometimes a player might only have one year where they play well enough to be considered and if they get left off because of the popularity contest then they get robbed of something special. Plus, we’re nerdy people who care about this stuff and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. 

The fan voters did right by A’ja Wilson, Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu and Napheesa Collier as each of them ranked in the top 10. The voting community properly identified Dearica Hamby as having a good season, which was a delightful surprise. We can even go as far as giving them credit for getting DeWanna Bonner into the top 15. 

Otherwise, there were lots of problems. Expectedly Caitlin Clark and Aliyah Boston were No. 2 and No. 3, respectively, which is quite a ways off from their rankings in total win shares (35th and 71st, respectively). If you want to be chill about popular players getting in, that’s fine but it got pretty bizarre after that. Sparks rookie Cameron Brink and Aces role player Kate Martin out-voted Liberty center Jonquel Jones by a country mile. Jones is the fourth highest ranked player in win shares in the WNBA. Brink is 78th and Martin 95th. 

Brink and Martin also demolished Kahleah Copper in the voting. Copper is the third leading scorer in the league. 

Kayla McBride, one of the great stories of the first half of the season, was left out of the top 25 despite ranking fifth in win shares. The eighth ranked player in win shares, Ezi Magbegor, suffered the same fate from the fans. 

Alyssa Thomas, MVP candidate from last year and No. 9 in win shares, was out-voted by rookie Sky center Kamilla Cardoso. 

It’s great that the rookie class is being recognized by fans, but the fact that the WNBA is going to actually weigh these results in All-Star decisions is a disaster from the perspective of rewarding players who are deserving. If I’m going further than I probably should with the fan voting, it makes me wonder about the “Caitlin Clark effect” and whether it has actually caused more interest across the league or if it’s just her and Angel Reese’s (seventh in fan voting) fans showing up for them (though Reese has made a case for an All-Star bid with her recent play). 

Atlanta and Dallas are down bad

After starting out with four wins in their first six games, the Atlanta Dream have gone 2-7 since then including some absolute beatdown losses. On Wednesday they were held to 55 points by the Lynx and then lost by double digits to the Fever, who had the league’s worst point differential at the time. They followed up that act with a 21-point loss to the Liberty on Sunday. Those losses might not even be their worst of the year, which came June 11 against Washington in an 87-68 drubbing by the Mystics. 

Even if we factor in that Rhyne Howard has missed the last three games, it’s tough to find a team that’s more lost in the WNBA woods than the Dream. Their top draft pick from last year Haley Jones ranks dead last  in win shares among the 91 players averaging at least 15 minutes per game. Outside of Allisha Gray and Howard, the rest of the roster is stocked with journeyman backup types like Aerial Powers, Nia Coffey, Jordin Canada and Crystal Dangerfield. Poor Tina Charles is grinding out 14 points and nine rebounds per game at age 35 while the team bounces between out of the playoffs and barely in. How are they going to fix this? 

Atlanta’s best plan is probably to trade away anything that isn’t nailed down, particularly Charles, and try to bump their lottery odds as high as they can get them. Drafting outside of the top three and taking middling prospects like Jones (fifth overall) and Laeticia Amihere (eighth overall) isn’t going to move the needle in a league that is operated by the A’ja Wilsons and Breanna Stewarts of the universe. They need Paige. 

It doesn’t appear they are going to be able to recreate the Lynx way of doing business either. Minnesota has one extremely good superstar and a bunch of high quality veterans like Kayla McBride, Alanna Smith, Courtney Williams and Natisha Hiedeman. Atlanta hasn’t proven to be a popular destination for free agents and they certainly doesn't have the coaching that the Lynx do with Cheryl Reeve. Winning the lottery in itself might not even be a get-out-of-mid-free card for them. 

As far as Dallas goes, it’s really difficult to decide whether we should be massively disappointed in the Wings or just send them sympathy cards. ESPN’s preseason power rankings expected the Wings to be the fifth- best team in the league, and that didn’t seem crazy at all considering they were 22-18 in 2023, good for the fourth-best record in the league. Last year they got 18 points, eight boards, and four assists per game out of Satou Sabally and 17/8/3 from Natasha Howard. This year Sabally hasn’t played yet and Howard just returned from injury. The minute Howard came back, emerging young scorer Maddy Siegrist went down with a broken finger. 

Still, nobody could have convinced you that they would go 3-13 in their first 16 games this season with their top scorer Arike Ogunbowale healthy. They have all but solidified that after this year they will have produced one above-.500 season in the six seasons since Ogunbowale was drafted. 

Were they on the right path and then everyone got hurt? Or have they not figured out how to build around Ogunbowale? Or does her extreme volume shooting with low efficiency (30th of 34 in effective field- goal percentage among players with 10-plus shots per game) make it impossible to play efficient basketball with her as the centerpiece? I’ll be honest: I don’t know the answer. Maybe they don’t either.  

My bad, Jackie

Small samples are a real pain in the back sometimes. Last week I created an all-analytics Team USA (with one North Macedonian, I learned) and included Allisha Gray over Jackie Young. Clearly if I was picking the team based on previous career performance then Young would have gotten the nod, but Gray was out-shooting her significantly and their win-share numbers were similar. So I went with the sharpshooter. 

Right after the article was published, both players trolled my list. Young went off for 32 points against Seattle for her second 30-point game in six days. Gray went into a shooting slump for the ages going 5-for-33 in two miserable Atlanta losses. Prior to Sunday’s games Young ranked 10th in the league in offensive win shares and Gray sank to 26th. 

I should have weighed more that Young is in the 92nd percentile in assists per game and 90th percentile in assist-to-turnover ratio. She’s also making 87.0% of her free-throw attempts, which is quite a bit higher than Gray’s 75.8%. 

I suspect now that Chelsea Gray is back in the Aces’ lineup that Young will get more open 3-point opportunities and will see a jump in her 31.8% 3-point percentage. 

Allisha Gray has been a bit of an analytics darling for years so I still think that she deserves more shine than she gets, but it’s tough to project that her numbers are going to improve based on where Atlanta stands right now. 

Anyway, it speaks to the challenges of analyzing stats when much can change in seven days. My apologies, Jackie. 

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Thanks for reading the Her Hoop Stats Newsletter. If you like our work, be sure to check out our stats site, our podcast, and our social media accounts on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also buy Her Hoop Stats gear, such as laptop stickers, mugs, and shirts! Haven’t subscribed to the Her Hoop Stats Newsletter yet?