2023 WNBA Season Statistics with Data Visualizations!
While the WNBA 2023 Season ended a few months ago with the Las Vegas Aces repeating as World Champions, I thought the off-season would be a great opportunity to take a look at some of the statistics that stood out over the course of the year. The league experienced its most watched season in 21 years, with a significant increase in attendance since 2018, reflecting a growing interest and support for women's basketball. My goal within these charts was to peel back some of the layers that made women's hoops so enjoyable.
The charts below provide valuable insights pertaining to points, steals, assists, blocks, turnovers, shooting percentage, usage and offensive rating. I used a cutoff of 300+ minutes and a minimum of 15 games played for the players in an attempt to eliminate large outliers. Also, please note each player was assigned one of three positions: center, forward and guard as this was how the data set from Basketball Reference was delivered.
Being new to creating data visualization charts, I was scouring the internet looking for a place to start and came across a fantastic article by Kathy Mucher ("Utah Jazz Analyst" Examines NBA 2022-23 Stats: Data Vizzes) that proved to be the inspiration I was looking for. Thank you Kathy!
Visualizations & Analysis
Dual Bar Chart: WNBA Team FG Percentages
While discussing basketball, analysis is usually broken up into FG% and 3Pt%, however, I wanted to take a look at the splits for each team regarding their two-point field goal percentage and their three-point field goal percentage. Led by 2x MVP A'ja Wilson (55.70%), the defending champs posted a league best, 55.07% shooting percentage from inside the arc, a staggering 4.19% better than the second best team, the New York Liberty. What also stands out to me is that two of the eight playoffs teams were in the bottom four in total FG% (Connecticut and Atlanta). Moreover, Dallas was abysmal from deep posting a league low 17.64% which resulted in a higher shot selection inside the paint. Let's take a look to see how this translated to total points scored across the entire season.
Horizontal Bars: Players on each team with >=400 Points
In the world of basketball, a teams field goal percentage usually correlates to points scored, not only on a per-game basis but over the course of an entire campaign. The above horizonal bar chart, outlines each team and the amount of players they had eclipse the 400 point total for the season. Using the filter above, I found that the Liberty were the most balanced team in the association with a league high five high-scorers while the defending champions had four. Washington, Los Angeles and Minnesota each had two high-scorers.
Top five leading scorers:
After looking into Dallas a bit more, Arike Ogunbowale actually shot 34.3% from deep for the season and scored 351 out of her 849 points from beyond-the-arc, which was second in the association behind sharp-shooter Sabrina Ionescu.
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Bubble Chart: Offensive Rating & Usage
Sticking to the offensive side of the ball, the above graph is able to illustrate the key players for each team and who should be the focal point for opposing defenses. While Jewell Loyd was the WNBA's leading scorer for the 2023 season, it is easy to see why as she boasts a league high usage rate of 33%. Furthermore, this graph is able to highlight players who are most effective on offense with limited touches. Veronica Burton has an offensive rating of 120, however she only had a usage rate of 8.90 which is due to coming off the bench behind Arike Ogunbowale. What is most impressive is how dominant the leading scorers were in terms of their offensive rating. A'ja Wilson, Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier all were in the upper echelon of usage rate, but each were still able to provide an outstanding rating.
Bubble Chart: Blocks, Steals & Turnovers
The last chart highlights the defensive end with the turnover amount provided under the players name. A name that stands out to me is Rebecca Allen who led all guards in blocks this past season with 50, which doubles the second closest, Chelsea Gray and Rhyne Howard. Not only was Allen outstanding on defense, but she also limited herself to 34 turnovers on the year which is a testament to her ability to make the correct play on offense. As you can see from the trendlines, forwards and centers dominate in the blocks department, while guards chip in with steals. In regards to turnovers, forward Alyssa Thomas led all players by a wide margin with 137 on the season. The next closest was Satou Sabally with 110. We also can determine that center, Ezi Magegor was in the top 15 in turnovers committed with 97, while Brittany Griner was second amongst centers with 66.
Data Source:
The source was downloaded from Basketball-Reference. I was able to generate two excel workbooks, one with advanced stats and one with season totals and combine them before uploading into Tableau Public.
Feedback & Connection:
Thank you for taking the time to read my first analytics article. All feedback, whether positive or negative is appreciated as I work towards improving not only my story telling abilities, but my visualizations as well. The link to these visualizations are here.
Academic Data Analyst | Lifelong Learner | Experienced Educator
1 年Fantastic project, Michael Gosselin, MSBA! ?? Brilliant to limit by number of minutes/games played! That's a great way to focus the analysis. Thanks for the shoutout. ?? And thanks to Avery Smith for inspiring my project.