WNBA Award Accuracy by Win Shares

As we have seen on these Nylon Calculus pages through Ian Levy’s data visualization of WNBA history and Seth Partnow’s deep dive into paint defense, there is useful information that exists for women’s basketball, but just isn’t being harnessed and utilized to its full potential yet.

One area where the lack of applied analytics may have affected the WNBA game is awards recognition. As the NBA has seemingly been more accepting of the use of analytics in the evaluation of the game, the lack of data utilization in the WNBA may have prevented worthy players of the honors they deserved.

The following brief analysis of WNBA awards explores how some of these accolades may have been more accurately handed out had a more numbers-based criteria been applied. Using Win Shares from Basketball-Reference.com as the metric of choice, I wanted to determine the following:

• The 5 players that benefited most from the “analytic blinders” with regards to the All-WNBA-team
• The 5 biggest snubs from All-NBA Teams
• The WNBA MVP race
• The WNBA MVP’s accuracy compared to the NBA’s

The All-WNBA Beneficiaries

Women’s college basketball has long played a bigger role than the professional side. The programs established at Tennessee and Connecticut reigned supreme long before the New York Liberty ever tipped off in 1997. Because of that, there are some clear instances when “big name” college basketball players have received the benefit of the doubt when it comes to NBA awards.

I first looked at the All-WNBA teams since the league’s inception in 1997 and compared them to the Top 10 in win shares for the league in that year. I then assigned a point value based on the following matrix.

Given the above rubric and using cumulative data, the following players were the beneficiaries of Win Shares NOT being the sole determinant in awarding All-NBA Awards.

While Angel McCoughtry (all-time WNBA usage percentage leader) and Ticha Penichiero (all-time WNBA assists leader) seem to get the benefit of the doubt when presenting their case against analytics, it’s the top four on this list that should catch any observer’s eye. These are all former winners of the Naismith Award as National Player of the Year with three of the players (Taurasi, Bird, Charles) playing for championship teams at the University of Connecticut while Leslie is arguably the most popular women’s player of all-time. A bias toward the popular seems to be doing some of the work here.

The All-WNBA Snubs

Listed above are those WNBAers that, based on their win shares, were not only snubbed from 1^st or 2^nd team All-WNBA consideration, but finished in the Top 5 and thus should possibly have been recognized. Listed as well is the difference in win shares between the player that should have made it and the player that had the lowest win shares of those that did make it. Note Penicheiro, mentioned above as one of those standing in the way in the top two snubs.

Brandy Reed has by far the biggest beef for not making an All-WNBA team and it turned out to be her only chance as she was out of the league shortly after due to behavioral issues, stating only four more games in her career. Crystal Robinson would go on to a nine-year career, but never came very close to another all-league honor. Both Griffith[1. League MVP in 1999 with five other all-league honors.]  and Whalen were able to make up for the oversight in other seasons. Unfortunately, Kara Lawson has the unfortunate distinction of having the top combination of career length and career success without being named 1^st or 2^nd team All-WNBA. She sits 19^th in league history in win shares and did garner one All-Star berth, but in 13 seasons, Lawson never got closer than in that 2012 when her 6.1 WS was 2.6 better than any other year in her career.

The WNBA MVP Race

The WNBA MVP race, has seen its own share of snubs. Much like the all-league teams, the beneficiaries of non numbers-based approach have been the predictable and popular few. Above left shows the player awarded MVP, and compares their WS to the player finishing #1 in WS. The chart is sorted showing the biggest difference in win shares at the top. Above right is a matrix comparing MVPs to seasons leading the league in Win Shares.

As shown above Leslie’s three MVP awards came without without finishing first in win shares during any of those seasons. In fact, in 2006 she won the award despite being a full 2.5 win shares behind the league leader. It’s hard to knock a player that finished her career fifth in league history in points and first in rebounds, but based on these numbers, she owes Yolanda Griffith a pair of trophies. The list again seems to favor those players that have crossover popularity like Leslie, Swoopes, and Parker or have UConn ties like Taurasi and Charles, though even UConn’s own Maya Moore has suffered a snub.

On the other side of the ledger, recently retired Australian center Lauren Jackson and former Volunteer, now 14-year veteran of the Indiana Fever Tamika Catchings could have put an even bigger stamp on their legacy in the league by being awarded two more MVP awards than they were actually given. It makes sense then basing these measurements on win shares that Catchings (86) and Jackson (72) are 1-2 in league history by that metric.

The WNBA vs NBA in MVP Voting

If there’s one thing we know about following the NBA, it is they are not perfect in awarding the MVP to the right person. But in going through the exercise of evaluating the WNBA awards through win shares, I wanted to find a way to tell if the NBA was more accurate in pairing their MVP with the actual leader in a one number metric like win shares. My belief was that the NBA MVP process would be more accurate due to the amount of information readily available for the NBA and the exposure of the league relative to the WNBA.

To make this evaliation, I took all of the MVP and win share Leader information for both the NBA and WNBA since 1997 (the WNBA’s first season), standardized all players win shares to an 82 game number, andsummed the difference in win shares of all years where the MVP and win shares leader was different. As it turns out, my belief was proven correct. In 11 of the 19 seasons, the NBA MVP was also the win share leader while that occurred less than half of the time in the WNBA. The WNBA also had 3 seasons – 2002, 2006, 2012 – where the prorated difference between the MVP and win share leader was larger than any difference seen in the NBA. Looking at those NBA win share leaders that didn’t get the MVP compared to who actually got the award, in every case, if you have a decent knowledge of NBA history, an argument can be made in each scenario that the win share leader should have received the award. That makes is entirely plausible that the same arguments can be made on the WNBA side.