Why Don’t the Advanced Metrics Like Caitlin Clark (Yet)?
Why Don’t the Advanced Metrics Like Caitlin Clark (Yet)?
Analytic value stats are lukewarm — at best — on the Indiana Fever's rookie sensation so far.
It’s not surprising that Caitlin Clark would be the biggest lightning rod of the 2024 WNBA season. She was the most talked-about player in college basketball — women’s or men’s — last season as she broke records, sold out arenas and earned the No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA draft. Through no fault of her own, Clark has also been at the center of media controversies spanning from the debate over pay in women’s sports to her treatment by fellow players, her being excluded from the U.S. Olympic team and overarching conversations about race in sports.
I was not immune to the controversy, either. Writing for ESPN earlier this month, I ranked the WNBA’s 2024 rookie class by the numbers, and Clark came in surprisingly low. The ranking was purely based on a consensus of different metrics at the time — metrics Clark has improved over the span of a few weeks. But even now, she is not No. 1 among rookies in either my Consensus Wins metric or my new WNBA Estimated RAPTOR wins added. According to one stat in the consensus ensemble, she’s been one of the worst rookies, adding zero wins.
So what gives? Why is Clark — the leading candidate for Rookie of the Year and probably far and away the league’s biggest star already — so slept-on by these metrics? Let’s run through a few factors at play.
Usage versus Efficiency
With a Usage Rate of 27.1 percent, Clark has been the eighth-most heavily relied-upon scoring option in the league so far — and easily the rookie whose number gets called most frequently:
Add in her 32.3 percent Assist Rate — meaning she records a dime on nearly a third of teammate baskets when she isn’t shooting herself — and Clark is being asked to play as heliocentric a role for the Fever as any player in the WNBA. (To wit: None of the other players above Clark on the Usage ranking have an Assist Rate higher than her new nemesis, Chennedy Carter, at 25.7 percent.)
With all of that responsibility comes downsides, however. Clark ranks just 21st in points scored per 100 team possessions despite the high Usage ranking, meaning she’s not converting her possessions into points as efficiently as other stars. We can also see this in her individual Offensive Rating of 94, which ranks 80th out of 104 qualified players with at least 100 minutes. (The league average is 102.4, for context.)
A big reason behind Clark’s inefficiency is turnovers: She ranks 98th of 104 players in Turnover Rate, giving the ball away on 27.7 percent of her offensive plays. Clark has nearly as many turnovers (88) as she has assists (99), leading the league in the former category by a margin of 31 turnovers over No. 2 Alyssa Thomas. (The difference between Clark and Thomas is the difference between Thomas and No. 32 Aari McDonald.)
I wrote about this “problem” with talented young scorers a while back in the context of Andrew Wiggins, another precocious prospect whose reputation exceeded his metrics for a long time. Generally speaking, there is a trade-off between Usage and Efficiency, where the latter goes down when a player takes on more of the former. That effect seems to be amplified for young talents on bad teams — a player like Clark can get her shot practically whenever she wants, and on an Indiana team that had the No. 1 pick for a reason, there is a need for someone to take on that role.
But at the same time, Clark may be getting asked to do too much, too soon, and it’s hurting her efficiency. Given the fact that some of her teammates actually do have higher Offensive Ratings than she does, Clark could probably stand to defer some of her Usage to them. (And some of that is a coaching issue on Christie Sides’ part.)
The need for 3
Clark’s efficiency would also improve if her signature 3-point shooting was adding more value.
Right now, Clark ranks just sixth in the league in made 3-pointers per 100 team possessions, with her 4.0 3s per 100 lagging behind Kayla McBride (5.3), Diana Taurasi (4.8), Julie Vanloo (4.2), Kahleah Copper (4.2) and Kelsey Plum (4.1). Clark is also knocking down just 32.8 percent of her tries from downtown, which is below the league average of 33.6 percent.
Yes, far more of Clark’s attempts have been of the logo-3 variety than her peers, a large part of what makes her a must-see player whenever she takes the court. But until the game adds a 4-point line, they don’t give you extra points for extra distance beyond the arc. A below-average 3-point percentage is below-average no matter where you take them from.
Clark should improve in this regard as the season goes on, though.
It’s not a perfect comparison, because WNBA defenders are bigger and faster and can cover more ground, but Clark shot 38 percent in college (which, you might be surprised to learn, has the same 3-point distance as the pros) over her final two seasons at Iowa. She’s also improved her WNBA 3P% already, from 32 percent in May to 34 percent in June. But for a high-usage player who takes 64 percent of her shots from deep, even a slight improvement in 3-point percentage will have an outsized effect on her efficiency stats.
Did she make Indy better?
Not every metric accounts for a player’s on-court impact, but let’s look at the components of one that does: Estimated RAPTOR.
On top of her individual metrics, Clark has a negative-1.3 on-versus-off net rating differential (meaning the Fever’s scoring margin gets worse, dropping from -9.7 points per 100 to -11.0, when Clark is on the court), along with a negative-2.3 differential on offense specifically. That sort of thing can be affected by many factors, most especially including the quality of a player’s teammates and lineups/substitution patterns. But it points to why Clark isn’t getting any “intangible” credit for making her team better.
The Fever’s primary lineup of Clark, Aliyah Boston, Kelsey Mitchell, NaLyssa Smith and Kristy Wallace has a negative-23.9 on-court net rating, which is by far the worst 5-woman unit in the WNBA this season (with a minimum of 50 minutes played together). What’s wild is that last year’s primary Fever lineup featuring Boston, Mitchell, Smith and Wallace — with Erica Wheeler instead of Clark — was plus-5.3!
This may all be due to the unique chemistry factors of adding such a heliocentric player like Clark. But overall, the Fever went from an offensive rating of 103.0 without Clark last year to a 102.1 this year, from a defensive rating of 108.1 without Clark to 113.0 this year, and from a net rating of -5.1 last year to a -10.9 this year, despite returning seven of their top 8 minute-earners — losing only Victoria Vivians, who had a -2.3 RAPTOR anyway — and adding the No. 1 pick.
How is that even possible? Of those seven returning players, five have seen their Estimated RAPTOR plus/minus dip in 2024. (The only exceptions being Smith and Wallace.) Mitchell, Wheeler and Grace Berger are each down at least 2.5 points per 100 of impact, while Boston has fallen off by a shocking 6.9 RAPTOR points.
Boston, the No. 1 overall pick from 2023, won Rookie of the Year unanimously last season, but her metrics are down nearly across the board while playing with Clark in 2024. It’s unclear how much of this is attributable to the fit between the two stars, and why the pair’s dynamic works far less than we’d expect from the sum of its parts. But it’s one of the reasons why adding Clark hasn’t elevated the Fever’s overall performance, and it’s something everyone involved needs to fix going forward.
It’s tough out here for rookie guards
Speaking of Boston winning Rookie of the Year, she showed up as one of the most successful rookie No. 1 overall picks in WNBA history when I looked into that in the spring. It might not be a coincidence that Boston is also a sturdy 6-foot-5 big who dominates on the interior: Research shows that those types of prospects adapt to the WNBA much more quickly than guards like Clark do.
To study this, I looked at RAPTOR for all Top-5 picks in the WNBA draft as rookies,1 broken out into three categories: Bigs (those whose listed position contained “center” in any configuration;2 Forwards (those whose position contained “forward”); and Guards (everyone else). Here’s a comparison of their rookie-year performances:
As we can see, the average highly-touted rookie Big does better than the average rookie Forward, who in turns does better than the average Guard. That gap has only intensified in recent years; since 2017, when Kelsey Plum had a dreadful -5.0 RAPTOR as a rookie, 12 guards were taken with Top-5 picks; only one — Rhyne Howard of the Atlanta Dream, drafted out of Kentucky — posted a league-average rating in her first year.
That sample doesn’t even include Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu, who went No. 1 in 2020 after an incredible career at Oregon, but who suffered a season-ending ankle injury just 3 games into her rookie year. During a more proper debut in 2021, Ionescu posted a -0.7 RAPTOR, continuing the below-average trend for touted guards.
What portends well for Clark’s future is that most of these guards who struggled early ended up just fine. Plum is now a two-time WNBA champion who had an elite +5.7 RAPTOR last year. Ionescu posted a comparable +4.8 rating last season as well. And Jackie Young, the No. 1 pick from 2019, who was slightly below-average as a rookie, had a stellar +6.8 RAPTOR last year, ranking third behind only league MVP Breanna Stewart and A'ja Wilson in wins added.
Present versus Future
Which brings us to the biggest non-controversy of Clark’s rookie season: Her supposed snub from Team USA’s Olympic roster.
While I appreciate the case laid out by journalists like USA Today’s Christine Brennan — a sportswriter I’ve respected for as long as I can remember — who argued that Clark’s presence on the team would have brought a massive spotlight to women’s basketball at the Olympics, the simple truth is that Clark didn’t deserve to make the roster yet.
Here’s a comparison of all 12 players who did make it, looking at their RAPTOR over the past season-and-a-half of WNBA play:
By RAPTOR at least, Clark has been nowhere near most of the players on the team. The only ones even within 6 points per 100 possessions were:
Brittney Griner, a future Hall of Famer who has never been below average in a season — and who has played quite well (+1.8 RAPTOR) since 2023, considering she missed all of 2022 while detained in a Russian prison.
Jewell Loyd, a former No. 1 pick and 2-time champion who averaged 24.7 PPG as recently as last season.
Diana Taurasi, arguably the greatest player in the history of women’s basketball, who is still plenty productive — averaging more PPG than Clark — at age 42.
Kahleah Copper, another player whom the efficiency stats don’t love as much as her reputation suggests, but who is at least scoring 23.5 PPG.
Against that mix of rivals, there really wasn’t justification for taking Clark at this stage of her career, especially given how up-and-down she has been at the WNBA level.
But that’s the point: Clark will almost certainly deserve a spot next time, when she has her Plum/Ionescu-style statistical glow-up with more experience. The problem is that the team plays in Paris in just over 5 weeks. Clark is the future, but the Olympics are basically now.
I have every belief that the metrics will come around on Clark as her game grows, improving her efficiency and measures of on-court impact. It may even happen soon. Until then, just know that there are objective reasons behind Clark’s surprisingly low placement in the advanced stats. For such a seemingly even-keeled person, Clark can elicit irrationally strong emotions from all corners of sports fandom (and beyond); here’s hoping we can all be a bit more logical when judging her strengths and weaknesses — and mainly, that we can enjoy watching her career continue to rise.
Filed under: WNBA
With a minimum of 200 minutes played as a rookie.
i.e., a “F/C” would be a “big”, as would a “C/F” or just a straight-up C.
A great piece that covers this topic in depth and in an extremely balanced way. More specifically, I found this piece inspirational - in the sense that it set my mind to wandering on a detour to a bunch of topics. I'll cover two here.
First, an admission. I don't watch or follow the WNBA or Caitlin Clark beyond seeing occasional highlights. So, I'm not a perfect observer I'll acknowledge up front. Given that caveat, what strikes me when I do see highlights is how much more advanced guard play seems to be than low post play. The WNBA guards seem to be very athletic, with very good quickness and athleticism, with the ability to shoot and guard aggressively.
The low post seems much slower and far less athletic - as if high school coaches early on identify their most athletic players and immediately put them at guard. Some of this is likely also due to a current overall lack of taller women players versus smaller guards.
Often, when I see a tall player get to a spot in the low post, they simply toss the ball off the glass for an easy bucket as defenders stand flat footed with their arms raised. This contrasted with guards who seem to have hands in their face on many contested shots. Those easy low post buckets are not often seen in the NBA because the player knows that some athletic big is waiting for the block - resulting in a kick out pass.
This feels entirely natural to me as the WNBA grows and develops and reminds me of those old videos of the NBA in the 1950s where guards dribbled around with speed while George Mikan grabbed a pass and turned around and banked it in (later a drill called the "Mikan Drill."). So, I would expect to see significant development and increases in athleticism for bigger players over time - like what happened in the NBA.
For now, that means to me that guards entering the WNBA can be expected to have a harder transition than those playing center or power forward. So, Clark's output isn't particularly surprising to me at all - and your data appears to support that.
Beyond that, my mind wandered back to 1976 and the Summer Olympics in Montreal. Going into the games the US women's gymnastics team was not expected to do much - and that was in fact the result. However, another gymnast - Nadia Comaneci - captured the world's attention at only 14. The Montreal Games were at the height of the Cold War, and Comaneci was different than us - she was part of the Soviet Block which we were supposed to hate.
That didn't happen. In fact, something incredible occurred. In the months that followed, young American girls flooded into gyms across the country "to be like Nadia." The result was Mary Lou Retton and a team silver medal in Los Angeles a mere 8 years later.
I'm sure somewhere in Bucharest you can find a 60 plus year old woman who was left off the Romanian team in 1976 who still contends that she was the better more deserving and experienced gymnast who - but for the Karolyis - should have gone instead of Comaneci. There is probably some truth in her bitter words.
But the larger point remains. History and the US Women's Gymnastics program - will remember Comaneci forever. Not just because of her perfect scores, but because she had charisma and a magnetism that drew viewers and inspired a generation of young girls and others to take up the sport...despite the seemingly insurmountable geopolitical barriers.
Revolutionaries are often not the smartest, highest performing or most talented among us at a point in time. They are, however, inspirational. Comaneci was revolutionary to the sport because she crafted a vision of the future that so many young athletes suddenly wanted to dedicate themselves to and occupy - politics notwithstanding. In a word she was inspirational, and the sport rose to new heights because we were able to put politics aside and be inspired.
That is what I do not understand about the reaction to Clark. Instead of embracing her obvious magnetism and elevating the sport so that all WNBA and female basketball players benefit, we seem as a divided nation more intent on pushing narratives and arguments in support of those narratives rather than capturing her huge potential upside. What a loss.
Like that lonely Romanian gymnast looking out the window in her sad apartment, we are fighting phantoms and missing the point. The US team will likely win the gold medal - with or without the last 5 players on the bench. Whether or not Clark's VORP or other metric is shy of somebody else is confusing the forest for the trees here.
We have Nadia moment right in front of us to inspire another group of young women toward basketball, and instead of embracing that and leveraging it, the WNBA and others seem to be fighting it and blowing it. I just shake my head at this enormous, missed opportunity for so many.
I suspect this is the point that Brennan, Kornheiser and others are making. Regardless of her stats, I think they are right.
Thanks again for the inspiration.
A quick follow-up from below. As we discussed, what small sample of Clark's passing I saw struck me as having a very high level of difficulty - resulting in a high level of turnovers as she learns the challenges of a new League and her teammates get better with anticipation. It appears that many of those passes are now connecting as her teammates grow more comfortable with her style and are now looking for the ball in certain spots that they didn't previously.
So, while her TOs will likely remain high until next year, the expected increase in AST/TO ratio is starting to appear already.
Shooting is still an issue due to the athleticism she faces at the perimeter as a guard. In watching the end of one her games, she looked very fatigued. This is to be expected because she had a high-pressure college season (both on and off the court) which immediately rolled into more pressure and scrutiny in the WNBA. I would suspect that not being selected for the Olympics will help her enormously over the last 15 games as she gets much needed rest.
Still, she has to be exhausted at this point which will impact her shooting as every shot is contested. I wouldn't be surprised if she gets much stronger in the offseason and has an enormous year in 2025. We'll see, but an interesting story to follow.