As part of today’s All-Star festivities in San Antonio, the Top 15 Players of All Time will be unveiled during a halftime ceremony. Just in time, I’ve updated my data to be able to do my own version strictly by the numbers – in this case, by the sames Wins Above Replacement Player statistic (WARP) I use to look at the league on a weekly basis. Naturally, the Top 15 is about more than just statistics – which is why these rankings don’t quite correspond to my own ballot – but they do provide an interesting perspective on the process.

Going strictly by career WARP, your Top 15 would be:

Player               WARP
-------------------------
Tamika Catchings     90.0
Lauren Jackson       87.4
Lisa Leslie          85.7
Sheryl Swoopes       72.5
Yolanda Griffith     65.6
Tina Thompson        59.8
Becky Hammon         57.3
Diana Taurasi        57.2
Katie Smith          50.6
Sue Bird             50.3
Katie Douglas        49.7
Penny Taylor         48.0
Taj McWilliams       46.3
Chamique Holdsclaw   41.3
Cynthia Cooper       41.1

You’re right to be suspicious of any list that has the great Cynthia Cooper barely sneaking in. Total value doesn’t completely measure the greatness we’re hoping to reward here, as using career WARP favors longevity over peaking in a way that helps produce championships. So I added three other factors: WARP/season (not including 2011, which is part of the career totals), WARP in three best seasons and best three consecutive seasons of WARP. To weight these factors equally, I divided the latter two by three and career WARP by 10 (a typical career length) to produce the following list:

Player               WARP
-------------------------
Tamika Catchings     42.4
Lauren Jackson       38.9
Sheryl Swoopes       34.8
Cynthia Cooper       33.9
Lisa Leslie          33.6
Yolanda Griffith     32.6
Diana Taurasi        32.1
Becky Hammon         24.9
Katie Smith          24.5
Sue Bird             24.0
Tina Thompson        23.8
Penny Taylor         22.2
Katie Douglas        21.9
Lindsay Whalen       20.8
Taj McWilliams       20.5

While I find the order within the list to be preferable, the names themselves don’t actually change very much. The only difference is Lindsay Whalen sneaking in ahead of Chamique Holdsclaw. Don’t count on seeing Whalen on the actual list, though – she wasn’t one of the 30 nominees. If we discount here, Cappie Pondexter moves into the last spot.

I had hoped this would help some of the veteran players like Teresa Weatherspoon, but ultimately T-Spoon did not have a long enough productive career. After five solid seasons, she was below replacement level her last three years in the WNBA, dragging down her average WARP per year.

Three Storm players get the nod by either method. As members of the All-Decade Team who have continued to add value since then, Sue Bird, Lauren Jackson and Katie Smith should have been on your ballot no matter what criteria you used.

The two most underrated players in the WNBA historically have been Katie Douglas and Penny Taylor. Both are enjoying career seasons, so in time they may come to earn the respect their statistics already indicate they deserve.

Be sure to watch the All-Star Game starting at 12:30 p.m. Pacific on ABC to see the real Top 15 Players.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 23rd, 2011 at 10:45 am and is filed under WNBA, history, stats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.