With the Los Angeles Sparks and Candace Parker coming to KeyArena tomorrow (7:00 p.m., FSN, 1150 AM KKNW, TIX), I was curious whether Parker’s strong start has her on pace to post the best rookie season of all time. This is the kind of question my WARP rating system is well-equipped to answer, estimating how valuable a player is to their team in terms of the wins they offer as compared to a replacement-level player.

Before 2008, these were the top 10 rookie seasons in WNBA history.

Player              Year  Team  WARP------------------------------------Tamika Catchings    2002   IND  11.2Lauren Jackson      2001   SEA   6.4Diana Taurasi       2004   PHO   6.2Betty Lennox        2000   MIN   5.5Sue Bird            2002   SEA   5.2Alana Beard         2004   WAS   5.1Chamique Holdsclaw  1999   WAS   5.1Swin Cash           2002   DET   5.0Tamika Williams     2002   MIN   4.4Cappie Pondexter    2006   PHO   4.4

Considering the Storm has two of the top five rookie seasons ever, it’s strange that the team has never had a Rookie of the Year. Sue Bird had the misfortune of going up against the best debut season the league has ever seen, when Tamika Catchings finished as the runner-up for MVP as a rookie. As for Lauren Jackson, well, there’s no way to sugercoat it. She was robbed. Portland’s Jackie Stiles won the award with 1.8 WARP, a figure dwarfed by Jackson’s 6.4 WARP. Ah, well – LJ’s never been in it for the awards.

Anyways, how do this year’s top rookies compare? Here’s the top six, projected to a full 34-game season.

Player              Team  WARP------------------------------Candace Parker       LAS   9.4Candice Wiggins      MIN   6.0Nicky Anosike        MIN   4.7Alexis Hornbuckle    DET   2.9Crystal Kelly        SAC   2.2Sylvia Fowles        CHI   1.8

It’s unlikely Parker will quite catch her fellow Tennessee alumna, but her rookie season has certainly been outstanding. Wiggins has been great in her own right and would have a chance for the second-best rookie season in league history were it not for Parker. Anosike has been legitimately outstanding and is having the best rookie season ever for a non-first-round pick (a title previously held by Michelle Brogan or, if you want to limit to college players, Tammy Sutton-Brown).

As for Fowles, on a per-minute basis she rates better than Wiggins, but her knee injury has naturally limited her total value.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 12th, 2008 at 7:07 am and is filed under WNBA, stats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.