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awhom111
Joined: 19 Nov 2014 Posts: 4260
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sportsfan48
Joined: 17 Nov 2004 Posts: 1228
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pilight
Joined: 23 Sep 2004 Posts: 67121 Location: Where the action is
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Posted: 07/26/19 8:23 pm ::: |
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We're missing a lot of stars. Nine of last year's All Stars have been out all or nearly all of the season, including half of the All WNBA teams. Half the teams, including last year's top four scoring squads, have been without their leading scorer from last season most or all of the year. Only one team has had every player who started double digit games for the last year active all season.
_________________ I'm sick and tired of the stories that you always tell
Shakespeare couldn't tell a story that well
See, you're the largest liar that was ever created
You and Pinocchio are probably related
Full of criss-crossed fits, you lie all the time
Your tongue should be embarrassed, you're a threat to mankind
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justintyme
Joined: 08 Jul 2012 Posts: 8407 Location: Northfield, MN
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Posted: 07/26/19 8:33 pm ::: |
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They are also allowing a lot more physical play in the post. I watch players constantly have two hands on a post player and not get a whistle blown. They are being hooked and held on entry passes with no calls, and once they do have the ball they are allowing a lot of contact on them during the shots. Contact that has been traditionally called. Fouls are down across the league, and most noticablely amongst post players.
Since these are the most efficient shots, allowing more physical play is going to impact offensive efficiency, and I would guess fairly significantly.
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myrtle
Joined: 02 May 2008 Posts: 32341
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Posted: 07/26/19 8:52 pm ::: |
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justintyme wrote: |
They are also allowing a lot more physical play in the post. I watch players constantly have two hands on a post player and not get a whistle blown. They are being hooked and held on entry passes with no calls, and once they do have the ball they are allowing a lot of contact on them during the shots. Contact that has been traditionally called. Fouls are down across the league, and most noticablely amongst post players.
Since these are the most efficient shots, allowing more physical play is going to impact offensive efficiency, and I would guess fairly significantly. |
exactly my thought. sometimes it looks like a warzone in the post this year, and markedly more so than even last year.
_________________ For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.
- Amanda Gorman
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pilight
Joined: 23 Sep 2004 Posts: 67121 Location: Where the action is
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Posted: 07/26/19 8:58 pm ::: |
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justintyme wrote: |
They are also allowing a lot more physical play in the post. I watch players constantly have two hands on a post player and not get a whistle blown. They are being hooked and held on entry passes with no calls, and once they do have the ball they are allowing a lot of contact on them during the shots. Contact that has been traditionally called. Fouls are down across the league, and most noticablely amongst post players.
Since these are the most efficient shots, allowing more physical play is going to impact offensive efficiency, and I would guess fairly significantly. |
Fewer fouls also means fewer foul shots, which negatively impacts scoring
_________________ I'm sick and tired of the stories that you always tell
Shakespeare couldn't tell a story that well
See, you're the largest liar that was ever created
You and Pinocchio are probably related
Full of criss-crossed fits, you lie all the time
Your tongue should be embarrassed, you're a threat to mankind
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Richyyy
Joined: 17 Nov 2005 Posts: 24408 Location: London
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Posted: 07/26/19 9:30 pm ::: |
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One of our other members wrote about this a little while ago as well: https://www.swishappeal.com/wnba/2019/7/2/20677815/wnba-scoring-stats
I agree that the games seem like they're being intentionally officiated differently this year. To me it feels like the refs have been told to try to keep things rolling, and they've interpreted that as 'call less stuff', which then inevitably leads to more contact (and then rolls into more contact when players notice what they're getting away with and start pushing the boundaries). Hell, in the last week or so I've seen so many missed travelling calls that I kinda feel like some of the refs are just letting them slide as well.
Much as I've hated some of the games we've had in recent years that turned into free throw parades - I think it was Wings-Dream games that tended to get ridiculous and break records - I'm not convinced this is good for the game. It might help game keep rolling in the very short term, but it turns them into brawls, and that's not great on the eye for anyone.
But yeah, pilight's Occam's razor answer probably holds some truth too - we're missing a whole bunch of people who were really good at putting the ball in the basket. |
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ClayK
Joined: 11 Oct 2005 Posts: 11219
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Posted: 07/27/19 8:57 am ::: |
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pilight has the answer: The reason stars are stars is that they can score or create scoring (Sue Bird), regardless (to an extent) of what the defense does.
It's always easy to blame the officiating, and maybe "letting them play" has impacted shooting percentage around the basket (love to see the league numbers from this year and last), but everything changes when scorers are missing.
As I've said too many times, the difference between having two scorers and three scorers on the floor at the same time is huge, and the difference between one and two is even larger. (By "scorer," I mean a player who requires help to defend effectively. A player who might have a nice game against an inferior individual defender is not a scorer by this definition; but a player who draws a team's best defender and still will get her points unless the team defense adjusts is a scorer.)
There's a reason stars get paid a lot of money, and it starts with this: You determine who wins by which team scores the most points -- and thus, by definition, the most valuable player is going to be the one who can score. And yes, great defenders are helpful, but as the old cliche goes, you can't stop great scorers, you can only hope to contain them.
_________________ Oṃ Tāre Tuttāre Ture Svāhā
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justintyme
Joined: 08 Jul 2012 Posts: 8407 Location: Northfield, MN
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Posted: 07/27/19 12:09 pm ::: |
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ClayK wrote: |
pilight has the answer: The reason stars are stars is that they can score or create scoring (Sue Bird), regardless (to an extent) of what the defense does.
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It's not A or B. It's A and B.
We are missing a lot of top players, and they have changed the way the game has been officiated. Both are having a noticeable impact on efficiency.
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PUmatty
Joined: 10 Nov 2004 Posts: 16382 Location: Chicago
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Posted: 07/27/19 12:21 pm ::: |
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justintyme wrote: |
ClayK wrote: |
pilight has the answer: The reason stars are stars is that they can score or create scoring (Sue Bird), regardless (to an extent) of what the defense does.
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It's not A or B. It's A and B.
We are missing a lot of top players, and they have changed the way the game has been officiated. Both are having a noticeable impact on efficiency. |
But justin, don't you know that it is always because the players aren't talented?
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NYL_WNBA_FAN
Joined: 28 May 2007 Posts: 14097
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Posted: 07/27/19 7:26 pm ::: |
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We've been without for all or most of this season:
Sue Bird, Breanna Stewart, Angel McCoughtry, Diana Taurasi, Candace Parker and Maya Moore. That's like taking Kevin Durant, Lebron James and Steph Curry out of the NBA, and I only named 3 players. You're talking about top-15 all-time players, all of whom were at that level or near it at the time of either their injuries or departures from the league.
Skylar Diggins is also missing, and she may not be a top-15 player all-time but she's in the mix for top-15 right now. When you're talking not only about losing that much scoring but also that much playmaking, offense is going to be affected in a major way. Fouls are down from 18.1 per game last year to 16.9. Lending credence to the theory that officiating is letting them play more this year. Of course, you're looking at some players with generally huge amounts of FTA (Angel, Diggins, etc.) missing. That impacts your fouls per game as well. Having so many playmakers missing also means that defenses get broken down less, which reduces FTA. I'd say the result of the lower efficiency is probably about 90% top players missing and 10% officiating being less tight.
We're talking about taking 7 top players from a 12-team league. In the NBA, picture what it would be like if you took 15 of the 25 best players out of the league (roughly the same ratio as removing the above 7 from the W). It would undoubtedly look a lot different.
_________________ The poster formerly known as LibWNBAFan.
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ClayK
Joined: 11 Oct 2005 Posts: 11219
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Posted: 07/28/19 11:12 am ::: |
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PUmatty wrote: |
justintyme wrote: |
ClayK wrote: |
pilight has the answer: The reason stars are stars is that they can score or create scoring (Sue Bird), regardless (to an extent) of what the defense does.
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It's not A or B. It's A and B.
We are missing a lot of top players, and they have changed the way the game has been officiated. Both are having a noticeable impact on efficiency. |
But justin, don't you know that it is always because the players aren't talented? |
Good point ... and though I haven't noticed a change in officiating emphasis, I'll start looking.
The issue for me is that I have a reflexive reaction to blaming the officials. I think that's just a default for so many things: We lost the game because of ...; the game was ruined by too many foul calls ...; the refs don't call walking any more ...
When in doubt, blame the refs.
Of course, even paranoids have enemies, so in this case it might be true that there has been a change in officiating that's impacted scoring. But I do think that removing so many elite scorers is the main difference -- and scoring ability is the rarest ability of all. You can almost always find someone who can defend, or be a physical rebounder, or handle the ball ... but finding scorers is very, very hard.
When I've had good teams, I've had one or two girls who can score. (My best team had three; the team I'm an assistant on now, which is very good, has eight.) When my teams have struggled, they still played good defense and still played hard, but we just had no way to score. We would get better shots than other teams, but wouldn't make enough to win.
_________________ Oṃ Tāre Tuttāre Ture Svāhā
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justintyme
Joined: 08 Jul 2012 Posts: 8407 Location: Northfield, MN
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Posted: 07/28/19 1:51 pm ::: |
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ClayK wrote: |
PUmatty wrote: |
justintyme wrote: |
ClayK wrote: |
pilight has the answer: The reason stars are stars is that they can score or create scoring (Sue Bird), regardless (to an extent) of what the defense does.
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It's not A or B. It's A and B.
We are missing a lot of top players, and they have changed the way the game has been officiated. Both are having a noticeable impact on efficiency. |
But justin, don't you know that it is always because the players aren't talented? |
Good point ... and though I haven't noticed a change in officiating emphasis, I'll start looking.
The issue for me is that I have a reflexive reaction to blaming the officials. I think that's just a default for so many things: We lost the game because of ...; the game was ruined by too many foul calls ...; the refs don't call walking any more ...
When in doubt, blame the refs.
Of course, even paranoids have enemies, so in this case it might be true that there has been a change in officiating that's impacted scoring. But I do think that removing so many elite scorers is the main difference -- and scoring ability is the rarest ability of all. You can almost always find someone who can defend, or be a physical rebounder, or handle the ball ... but finding scorers is very, very hard.
When I've had good teams, I've had one or two girls who can score. (My best team had three; the team I'm an assistant on now, which is very good, has eight.) When my teams have struggled, they still played good defense and still played hard, but we just had no way to score. We would get better shots than other teams, but wouldn't make enough to win. |
I agree that we do default to "blame the refs" too frequently, but in this case there is statistical evidence to support a shift in emphasis. As Richyyy noted, probably to try and smooth out the flow of games so there isn't as many whistles--something that may be backfiring as it is leading players to adapt to more physical play being allowed and actually making things less smooth even though the game is not being stopped as frequently. Eric's article in Swish Appeal that Richyyy also linked too did a great job of putting numbers behind all this. It is really worth a read.
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Richyyy
Joined: 17 Nov 2005 Posts: 24408 Location: London
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Posted: 07/28/19 2:10 pm ::: |
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And it's not like we're just ranting about the officiating. This isn't "These refs are terrible! Scoring is down because they're even worse than last year!" We're saying something is different. Whether you think that difference is better or worse is in the eye of the beholder. |
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ClayK
Joined: 11 Oct 2005 Posts: 11219
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Posted: 07/29/19 10:05 am ::: |
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Always the contrarian (as my wife often points out) ...
Obviously, there are fewer free throw attempts, which very likely has a lot to do with officiating. But here's another aspect ...
To once again (too often?) refer to my own coaching experience, I will often ask our defenders a question after they've committed a shooting foul: "Was she going to make that shot?"
Obviously, if the odds were that she wouldn't, don't foul her. Make a poor shooter make a shot. Now if a player who's very likely to score gets into the lane, the percentages are on your side to foul her, as she might miss a free throw.
And also, one of the ways scorers score is to get in the lane and draw fouls, and free throws. If fewer players can break down defenders off the dribble, then there will be fewer foul shots. And if fewer players can make threes, then there's no need to close out and risk drawing a foul.
Again, I'm not saying that officiating isn't a part of it. The WNBA could have said "Let 'em play," and that's a factor in fewer FTAs.
But elite scorers force defenders to foul. But fouling a non-elite scorer will get you to the bench at this level, as scouting makes it clear what the percentages say.
Officiating has very likely changed, but the trickle-down effect of putting more average or below-average offensive players on the court will reduce the number of free throws as well.
_________________ Oṃ Tāre Tuttāre Ture Svāhā
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Aladyyn
Joined: 23 Jul 2017 Posts: 1566 Location: Czech Republic
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Posted: 07/29/19 11:57 am ::: |
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If injuries to stars are the reason, why are teams like Aces and Sun also struggling offensively?
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awhom111
Joined: 19 Nov 2014 Posts: 4260
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awhom111
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mavcarter #NATC
Joined: 02 Sep 2010 Posts: 5935 Location: Chicago
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SpaceJunkie
Joined: 10 Sep 2012 Posts: 4241 Location: Minnesota
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Posted: 09/10/19 11:53 pm ::: |
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awhom111 wrote: |
Seattle is a ridiculous 34 points per 100 possessions better when Natasha Howard is on the court for them. |
All the more reason why Howard is arguably the G.O.A.T. of WNBA players—no player has ever meant as much/done as much for a francise as Howard and Seattle.
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SpaceJunkie
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Stormeo
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Randy
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