Another week, another update of the advanced WNBA stats. We’re a day later this time around, but the league took Monday night off, so these are still current numbers. Naturally, things aren’t quite as pretty this time around for the Storm after a narrow home victory and a blowout loss in Los Angeles, the team’s first lopsided defeat of the year.
We start, as always, with per-possession Offensive and Defensive Ratings.
Team ORtg Team DRtg
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Phoenix 106.9 Connecticut 91.2
Minnesota 106.0 Indiana 91.6
Seattle 103.3 Los Angeles 95.1
Chicago 100.2 New York 95.8
Indiana 100.0 San Antonio 96.7
Atlanta 99.8 Seattle 96.9
Connecticut 99.0 Washington 97.3
AVERAGE 99.0 Detroit 98.5
Washington 98.3 AVERAGE 99.0
Sacramento 96.2 Atlanta 100.5
Detroit 93.5 Minnesota 102.4
Los Angeles 93.3 Sacramento 104.3
New York 92.1 Chicago 105.1
San Antonio 90.8 Phoenix 106.1
The weekend’s surprise was the Minnesota Lynx regrouping from a blowout loss of their own at KeyArena to defeat the Phoenix Mercury at home by 29 points. Clearly, home-court matters in this league. Minnesota also beat New York to improve to 6-3 even with Seimone Augustus on the sidelines. The Lynx still has plenty of talent (as we’ll see below), and if they play decently on defense there’s no reason to believe this couldn’t be a playoff team in the Western Conference.
The Storm’s home-and-home series with the Sparks saw the teams move in opposite directions in the Offensive and Defensive Rating categories. Los Angeles now looks like an elite defensive team, while the Storm slipped back toward the pack on offense. But note that the Sparks still did not score the ball especially well. The Storm ranking sixth in Defensive Rating looks bad, but the team has still been well above average at the defensive end of the floor.
Team Exp. W Team Exp. W
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Seattle 21.4 Connecticut 24.4
Minnesota 20.1 Indiana 21.2
Phoenix 17.8 Washington 18.6
Los Angeles 17.6 Atlanta 15.4
San Antonio 12.7 New York 15.2
Sacramento 8.7 Detroit 14.3
Chicago 12.5
What we see in the Expected Wins standings based on point differential is that there is a lot of parity in the league right now. Only Connecticut on the positive side and Sacramento on the negative one are significantly different from average right now. So far, the Eastern Conference has been the stronger of the two conferences, with two of the league’s three best teams and far more depth with seven teams as opposed to the West’s six.
Player Tm Win% WARP
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Lauren Jackson SEA .834 3.1
Diana Taurasi PHO .740 2.5
Tamika Catchings IND .750 2.3
Nicky Anosike MIN .757 2.2
Jia Perkins CHI .718 1.9
Sancho Lyttle ATL .742 1.8
Alana Beard WAS .717 1.7
Cappie Pondexter PHO .616 1.7
Seimone Augustus MIN .756 1.5
Charde Houston MIN .706 1.5
Lauren Jackson is putting some distance between herself and the rest of the league as its most valuable player in terms of Wins Above Replacement Player. This week’s big leap was taken by Tamika Catchings, who had 37 points, 22 rebounds and nine steals in two games as the Fever extended its winning streak to six straight and moved atop the league at 6-2. Indiana’s point differential so far hasn’t been as dominant as its record, but the Fever is still playing very strong basketball and – as usual – Catchings is the biggest reason why.
Even a week and a half after her injury, Augustus remains in the league’s top 10 in WARP thanks to her strong start. More noteworthy if two of her teammates alongside here. The elite talent is still there in Minnesota.
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