Nylon Calculus: Napheesa Collier is the WNBA’s next two-way force

A new WNBA metric helps highlight the two-way brilliance of Napheesa Collier’s rookie season.

Napheesa Collier stepped into some big shoes last season. With Maya Moore sitting out the season to focus on her criminal justice reform advocacy a still talented Lynx roster was missing its core. And throughout an injury-plagued season for Minnesota, Collier established herself as the next face of the franchise and one of the league’s brightest stars.

Collier averaged 13.1 points, 6.6 rebounds, 2.6 assists, 1.9 steals and 0.9 blocks per game, shooting 53.1 percent inside the arc, 36.1 percent beyond it and locking up the Rookie of the Year award along the way. As impressive as Collier’s counting stats were, they barely capture the full extent of her impact. The Lynx were better by an almost unbelievable 16.7 points per 100 possessions when she was on the floor, an effect that manifested at both ends of the floor.

The new WNBA metric, Estimated Contributions (EC), from Positive Residual offers a more nuanced picture of just how good Collier was this season. EC is a blended, all-in-one metric expressed as an estimate of net points contributed per 100 possessions. It the process for building it is as follows:

1. Start with multi-season Regularized Adjusted Plus-Minus (RAPM).
2. Regress some combination of box-score, play-by-play, and on-court/off-court impact statistics against RAPM.
3. Apply a series of adjustments to adapt the model to a single-season setting.

For those more interested in the nitty-gritty details from Positive Residual on the model’s construction definitely check out the full explanation.

The table below shows the Offensive, Defensive and Total EC for each WNBA player who received at least one Rookie of the Year vote in the past decade.

The sum of Collier’s EC puts her among the elite players in this pool. The seven other rookies here who posted an EC of plus-1.0 or better have a combined six MVPs between them. But it’s also the split between Collier’s offense and defense that makes her trajectory so special. Like in the NBA, many WNBA rookies, even those destined for greatness, are not particularly effective, especially on defense, as they adapt to the speed of the professional game and learn the ropes.

What makes Napheesa Collier such a special player?

Collier’s plus-2.1 DEC is the second-highest of any rookie in this pool and one of just five marks that are at least a point above average. It’s not just an elite defensive season for a rookie, it’s a top-65 defensive season in WNBA history. As a general rule, very few rookies are good defenders and almost none are elite.

Right now, Collier looks like a perennial All-Star and Defensive Player of the Year candidate but to really leap to that MVP candidate tier she’ll need to continue growing on offense. Last season, she functioned as a complementary scorer and creator, with a usage rate well below 20 and just 24 percent of her made shots being unassisted. She’s a strong spot-up threat and smart cutter who got herself plenty of baskets with flashes to the post and quick seals.

But the Lynx’s veteran-heavy roster didn’t offer a ton of opportunities for Collier to create for herself. She certainly showed the potential to handle a larger load; she doesn’t have the explosive first step to blow past defenders but she has a confident handle along with a nice touch and excellent body control.

The Lynx roster will certainly be younger this season — with Seimone Augustus and Danielle Robinson playing elsewhere, Maya Moore sitting out another season, Odyessy Sims taking a year off to be with her first child and three new rookies joining the roster. Sylvia Fowles might still be the anchor at both ends but Collier will have plenty of opportunities to disrupt on defense and grow into a more primary role on offense.

Player development is almost never linear but given where Napheesa Collier is starting from, she’s well on her way to an exceptional career.