Advanced Stats are a way to study basketball through objective analysis. It is a more in-depth way to look at a simple box score, and more accurately evaluates the skill and production of a player or team. For a more detailed breakdown of advanced stats, we encourage you to read this excellent John Schuhmann article from NBA.com’s Hangtime Blog.

Our stats are not available for download for either academic or personal use. They are for viewing and enjoying on WNBA Stats

There are strict qualifications to become an Official Leader of the statistic, and it has to do with the amount of time they have played in that season, as well as their proficiency in that stat. The qualifications for Official Leaders can be found here.

It is a simple metric that gives an excellent indication of performance at both the team and player level. It’s a major improvement to our EFF Rating. Notably 2 things changed: (1) We included Personal Fouls, (2) We added a denominator. We feel the key here is the denominator because it acts as an "automatic equalizer". Using the denominator, we find there is no need to consider the "PACE" of the statistics that are being analyzed. In its simplest terms, PIE shows what % of game events did that player or team achieve. The stats being analyzed are your traditional basketball statistics (PTS, REB, AST, TOV, etc..) A team that achieves more than 50% is likely to be a winning team. A player that achieves more than 10% is likely to be better than the average player. A high PIE % is highly correlated to winning. In fact, a team’s PIE rating and a team’s winning percentage correlate at an R square of .908 which indicates a "strong" correlation. We’ve introduced this statistic because we feel it incorporates a bit of defense into the equation. When a team misses a shot, all 5 players on the other team’s PIE rating goes up. The formula for PIE can be found here in the Glossary.

A player or team’s base statistics are updated simultaneously with the game and in real time. The advanced stats are updated between 10-15 minutes after a game finishes.

There are four important advanced statistics that winning teams excel at. These factors are Effective Field Goal Percentage (eFG%), Turnover Ratio (TO Ratio), Offensive Rebound Percentage (OREB%), and Free Throw Attempt Rate (FTA Rate). eFG% measures field goal percentage adjusting for the fact that a 3-point field goal is worth one more point than a 2-point field goal. The formula is eFG% = ((FGM + (0.5 * 3PM)) / FGA. TO Ratio is the number of turnovers a player or team averages per 100 possessions used. Highlights good scorers who infrequently pass the ball (i.e. Players who typically catch and shoot.) The formula is (TO * 100) / (FGA + (FTA * 0.44) + AST + TO. OREB% is the percentage of team offensive rebounds grabbed by a player or team. The formula for finding this is OREB / (OREB + OppDREB).This eliminates a player or team’s inflated rebound numbers if the team misses a lot of shots. Free Throw Attempt Rate shows free throws attempted relative to field goals attempted by a player or team. FTA Rate shows how often a player or team goes to the line, and how good that individual is at drawing fouls. The formula is simply FTA/FGA. For further reading, we highly recommend reading through John Schuhmann’s explanation on Four Factors.

The statistic representing the combined PTS+REB+AST is currently unavailable