Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Hit Me With the Digits

Latest WNBA stats as we near the midway point of the season ...

OFFENSIVE RATING

Team          ORating
---------------------
Seattle 104.5
Phoenix 103.4
Indiana 103.3
Los Angeles 97.9
Detroit 97.3
Minnesota 97.1
Washington 97.0
Sacramento 97.0
Chicago 96.8
Connecticut 96.2
San Antonio 95.7
Houston 94.2
New York 93.4
What a strange distribution. There are three elite offensive teams in the league - the Storm, Phoenix and Indiana. Then the difference between them and anyone else is larger than the difference between fourth and 13th (last).

New York's offense is really struggling. The Liberty miss Erin Thorn's outside shooting very, very, very badly right now. Los Angeles was part of the elite group when we last did this exercise two weeks ago. The Sparks miss Chamique Holdsclaw, but unlike Thorn, she's not coming back.

DEFENSIVE RATING
Team          DRating
---------------------
Sacramento 90.6
Indiana 90.9
Detroit 92.6
San Antonio 95.1
New York 96.3
Seattle 99.2
Connecticut 99.2
Chicago 99.2
Phoenix 99.3
Los Angeles 99.8
Washington 101.0
Minnesota 104.4
Houston 105.1
Another strange distribution. There are several distinct groups. Sacramento and Indiana are elite, Detroit is a slight bit off that pace, San Antonio and New York are above-average and Minnesota and Houston are bad. Everyone else is right about the same. The Storm's Defensive Rating has shown tremendous improvement since the last time we looked at these numbers. Holding New York to 53 points has a way of doing that.

POINT DIFFERENTIAL

Again, the standings based on expected wins (as calculated from point differential):
WEST          ExpW   EAST          ExpW
------------------ ------------------
Sacramento 22.3 Indiana 26.3
Seattle 20.4 Detroit 21.5
Phoenix 20.2 Chicago 14.5
San Antonio 17.4 Connecticut 14.2
Los Angeles 15.8 New York 14.1
Minnesota 12.9 Washington 13.9
Houston 8.3

The Fever is far and away the league's top team with Detroit slipping lately. In the East, while the official standings show Washington and Connecticut well back off the back, differential shows them as right with Chicago and New York.

Of course, it's worth noting that one lopsided victory can have a big impact on point differential.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

love to read all these stats although am a novice at interpreting them all. Naieve question- does anyone calculate points per minute played by player ? If so, how does each of our players stack up against the other teams ?