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This is going to be a legendary WNBA rookie class in a lot of ways. From the transformation in viewership to their exploits on the court, it's undeniable that they've already had a major impact. The primary figures in the class are Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, two players who'd already clashed in college and were pitted against each other, whether they liked it or not, before they set foot on a WNBA court. However their seasons are completed, both have already had remarkable rookie seasons. Clark is setting rookie assist records and leading the league in that category, before even considering her scoring skills; Reese is putting up rebounding numbers the league's never seen, rookie or not.
However, both Clark and Reese bring a lot of attention, plus loyal and vociferous fan bases (and a lot of people who like to chime in whether they're actually fans of either). And it may be 45 years later, but the fact that one is black and one white still ratchets up the tension and inevitable negativity of some of the arguing as much as when Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were driving NBA interest. Reasonable people can give both players credit for their skill and achievements while still noting the areas they have to improve. But a lot of people on the internet aren't particularly reasonable. So the fact that Clark has set turnover records alongside her remarkable assist numbers is hard to mention without being declared a hater or people saying her teammates are incompetent and were responsible for all the giveaways. Give Reese credit for her remarkable offensive rebounding and you'll immediately be flooded with people saying they're all off her own misses, so they don't really count. So I went back for context. I watched every Clark turnover from this season and every Reese offensive rebound. I took notes on how many were dreadful Clark passes, and how many were Fever players failing to catch perfectly thrown balls. I added up how many times Reese got what used to be called Moses Malone rebounds, throwing the ball up and adding one to her board totals by getting it back again. You can argue about how valuable the results are, but I watched (all numbers accurate through Tuesday night).
Before we look at Clark's actual numbers, let's make it clear that committing a few turnovers isn't inherently bad. If you have a lead ballhandler, especially one who dominates possession as much as Clark does, and that player virtually never turns the ball over, then they're probably not taking any risks. We've all seen point guards like that. The ones who can competently bring the ball up the floor, pass it off to a teammate, and then goes and stands in the corner for the rest of the possession. There's some value to a player like that who can get you into your offense as an organiser, but they're not going to take you very far on their own. That player better be handing the ball off to some very talented teammates. So a few turnovers here and there are fine. It shows that you're trying things. Maybe you get stripped occasionally, maybe a pass gets poked away - you live with it. All of that said, Clark has put up pretty incredible turnover numbers this season. She's leading the league with 5.5 per game, 1.7 clear of anyone else (which is a lot more than she's leading the assist charts by). She broke the single-season turnovers record before everyone left for Paris and has only been topping it up ever since. Her high usage rate means that her turnover rate isn't as bad - behind Alyssa Thomas in fact, the player in second in the assists rankings - but the raw numbers are a little scary. You have to scroll to page two of the assists-to-turnover rankings on the league's official stats site to find Clark in 71st place.
But a central part of the point of this exercise was to check through Clark's season to see if there are any genuine mitigating factors. You do, inevitably, find some turnovers that aren't entirely her fault. You don't find many that are truly misattributed. This is no longer the Old West of WNBA stat-keeping where we'd check 'triple-doubles' after games were completed and find rebounds given to players on the other side of the court, or assists to players who never touched the ball. They sometimes update small errors as games are in progress, but by the end they're typically pretty damn close. But turnovers are often the fault of at least two players, and the statisticians have to pick someone. If a pass goes off someone's fingertips, was it uncatchable or a missed catch? If an entry pass into the paint doesn't end up in a teammate's hands, was it a poor pass or should the post player have fought harder to gain possession? There are guidelines, but sometimes the scorer just has to pick who they think was most responsible. Among Clark's 164 turnovers, I ended up with "maybe" next to 16 of them - my personal notation for 'arguably the receiver should've done a better job of getting hold of the ball, rather than Clark needing to throw it better'. Those are the near-50/50 ones. Of course, there are probably also a bunch of near-50/50s that were given the other way, but to check all of those I'd have to watch every other Fever turnover as well, and I'm not quite that much of a masochist. I had "not her fault" or "should've been caught" next to only six, indicating I felt they just should've been credited to the other player.
So she comes by the vast majority of her turnovers honestly. There were some other interesting aspects to watching them all through in chronological order. The "trapped, escape pass picked off" plays tailed off very quickly after the opening series of games. Teams are simply trapping and blitzing her a lot less now, because Clark and the Fever improved significantly in handling that kind of defense. Teams don't stop running those sorts of defenses just because people on social media are saying it's mean; they stop because it's counterproductive for winning. On another note, behind-the-back passes are often not Caitlin's friend. She seems to throw them occasionally to keep herself entertained, rather than the Chelsea Gray approach of largely using them when it's the most efficient way to get the ball where it needs to go. Clark has also definitely learned her teammate's skills and tendencies to a greater extent as the season's gone on. Far fewer of those 'get ahead' or touchdown passes are going astray these days, because she has a better grasp of who can catch them and who has the speed to get there. Lately, the vast majority of her turnovers come when trying to pass to a teammate who's surrounded by traffic. Those look great when you thread the needle perfectly, but sometimes aren't worth the risk. It's a balance that'll be much easier to find when she's played 300 pro games, rather than 30.
All of that said, Clark’s actual turnover totals have only gone down fractionally since earlier in the season. She's still averaging nearly five per game in August. To a certain extent it's the price of doing business, and you accept the bad along with all the good. But a turnover isn't necessarily the diametric opposite of an assist. A turnover means that possession is over, and it ended with you giving the ball to the other team without getting a shot off. A possession that didn't contain the same assist might well still have ended with a different shot, even if it was one that didn't have quite the same chance of success. So maybe Clark will have to learn to take slightly fewer risks in future years of her career in order to reach the optimum state for her ballhandling and distribution. No one's perfect in their rookie year.
In some ways, this assessment is easier with Reese. As long as you can find the video (which isn't always entirely straightforward with the WNBA's stats archive), whether or not she's picking up offensive rebounds off her own misses is a yes or no proposition in each case. Of her 152 offensive boards so far this season, I counted 37 coming from her own missed attempts, and an additional 15 off her own attempts being blocked. So 52 total of the 152, or right around a third. That's undoubtedly a lot - her rebound numbers are being somewhat 'padded' by being right there to clean up her own mistakes - but if you removed every single one of them she'd still be averaging over 11 rebounds per game, enough for comfortably second in the league behind only A'ja Wilson.
The biggest issue with Reese's game is the number of these offensive rebound opportunities that she presents herself with. Shooting below 40% from the field is concerning if you're a small guard taking a lot of threes and creating a lot of those shots off the dribble from the perimeter. Reese has virtually no jump shot and takes 85% of her shots from inside eight feet. She has an unorthodox technique that launches the ball from far too low, which is part of why she comfortably leads the league in getting her shots blocked. Much as adding a jump shot to her game to increase her threat from outside the paint would be valuable, becoming significantly more efficient on those finishes around the rim should be the first order of business.
All of that said, she does already mitigate the issue to a certain extent. Evident in watching them all back (even if I didn't add up this particular total in my notes), is the number of times rebounding her own miss results in the next effort going in, or at least Reese drawing a foul. As an extreme example, if every initial shot she took was an attempted layup that missed, only to result in her own offensive rebound and a putback basket, she'd be shooting 50% from the field but the misses would be virtually irrelevant. It'd be essentially the same as shooting 100%, only with more time taken off the clock and a lot of rebounds added to her numbers.
Reese is an incredibly physical rebounder, constantly creating contact and often planting an arm in the back of an opponent even while she's watching the initial shot go up. It's a big part of her success, and why she's seventh in the league in free throws per game as a rookie. In free throw rate, among players who've played at least 400 minutes this season, she trails only Alyssa Thomas. But I wonder whether the success will hold up to quite the same extent long-term. A lot of the contact she creates inside isn't exactly legal, and the more officials see those techniques on tape and other teams bring it to the attention of the league, the less she might get the benefit of the doubt. Veterans tend to get more calls, but that's because they get smarter. Reese may have to develop a new collection of tricks for the battle in the paint, along with simply trying to finish more efficiently to make those offensive boards less necessary.
So ultimately this was an interesting exercise to see if the whining and moaning about the minor flaws in the games of two exceptional rookies had any real validity. With the ultimate answer of "maybe, a bit". Clark does turn the ball over a bit too much, and it's not all down to teammates failing to catch the ball. Reese does get a few extra rebounds thanks to her own misses. But they're both having great years anyway. Let's all try to be reasonably civil when the Rookie of the Year results come out in about a month...
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.
Thank you for this analysis. I find it interesting and helpful in "listening" to all the talk.
Actually, to get a more accurate feel for Clark’s assist/turnover performance (and since you saw fit to comment on the relative gaps between Clark and number 2 in each category), you should factor in the assists lost to blown layups.