Misconceptions and Truths of Women's Basketball, Part I

Dateline: 09/09/98

NIKKI MCCRAY WAS THE MVP of the first ABL season in '97, winning the league's first title with the Columbus Quest. She chose then to defect to the WNBA, joining the Washington Mystics, where she won no awards and her team won a pro basketball worst 10% of their games. The fact that McCray posted awful numbers and her team lost at a record pace means nothing about the relative quality of the ABL and the WNBA. It means merely that Nikki McCray wasn't that great in the ABL either. Her numbers told me that she wasn't an MVP.

Top 1997 ABL Players By Net Points Per 40 Minutes
Rank Name Team Offensive
Rating 		Defensive
Rating 		Net Points
Per 40
Minutes
1 Crystal Robinson COL 121.5 90.3 5.2
2 Katie Smith COU 123.9 95.0 4.3
3 Natalie Williams POR 106.2 86.6 3.7
4 Cindy Brown SEA 107.5 91.1 3.1
5 Shannon Johnson COU 118.0 92.7 3.0
6 Tonya Edwards COU 106.2 92.0 2.9
7 Valerie Still COU 104.1 86.2 2.7
8 Andrea Lloyd COU 109.5 89.0 2.4
9 Debbie Black COL 99.7 85.2 1.8
10 Carolyn Jones NEB 106.9 99.6 1.6
11 Nikki McCray COU 99.7 92.9 1.6
12 Edna Campbell COL 100.9 92.4 1.4
13 Sonja Tate COU 95.3 86.2 1.3
14 Teresa Edwards ATL 103.5 98.7 1.1
15 Taj McWilliams RIC 99.4 92.4 1.0
16 Val Whiting SJL 96.2 90.1 1.0
17 Sheila Frost POR 98.3 91.5 0.9
18 Dawn Staley RIC 103.9 98.8 0.9
19 Adrienne Goodson RIC 102.9 98.8 0.8
20 Trisha Stafford SJL 95.8 92.1 0.7

And, for further evidence of her over-hyped ability, her old ABL team, the Columbus Quest, got better without her in 1998 and won another title.

(Notice also that Dawn Staley, who defected to the WNBA on the eve of the WNBA Championship, didn't put up numbers as good as her hype either. If she gets assigned to a mediocre franchise in the WNBA, it could easily struggle as much as Washington did this year.)

The reality is that perception of the professional women's players right now is skewed. Reporters don't know yet how to cover it. Coaches are still guessing on how to evaluate their players in a game where the style is somewhat different than in college. Fans cheer for whomever pumps their fist. Awards are somewhat arbitrary. This is all just further proof that no one really understands women anyway.

In women's basketball, there is a lot of data by democracy. Data by democracy means that people essentially accept "what other people think" as truth. People voted that McCray was the best ABL player in '97, even though she wasn't, and the WNBA went after her. Not only that, the Quest's fans thought that they were doomed to failure without her. (I don't think McCray's old teammates thought so.) McCray was over-rated in the ABL and now she's over-rated in the WNBA where she is still -- what should I call it? -- "spokes-singer" for the league.

As we know in the U.S., democracy can take a while to move along, but it usually does seem to work. McCray didn't win any awards this year. Cynthia Cooper, who wasn't even a backup singer on the 1997 WNBA ads, has won consecutive MVP's because she deserves them. She is clearly the best player in the league (by more than just my numbers) and the voters have seen it, being unanimous in their assessment this time.

Here, now, is some of the data without the democracy:

1998 WNBA Leaders in Net Points Per 40 Minutes
Rank Name Team Offensive
Rating 		Defensive
Rating 		Net Points
Per 40
Minutes
1 Cynthia Cooper HOU 116.5 88.5 6.1
2 Sheryl Swoopes HOU 104.5 82.9 3.9
3 Lisa Leslie LAS 100.3 84.5 3.6
4 Jennifer Gillom PHO 101.3 85.8 3.5
5 Tina Thompson HOU 104.6 85.1 2.7
6 Cindy Brown DET 102.3 82.8 2.7
7 Michelle Griffiths PHO 106.3 88.2 2.2
8 Vickie Johnson NYL 106.0 92.5 2.0
9 Isabelle Fijalkowski CLE 101.4 90.6 1.8
10 Kim Perrot HOU 99.1 85.1 1.8
11 Vicky Bullett CHA 94.9 84.8 1.7
12 Sandy Brondello DET 104.4 94.4 1.6
13 Andrea Stinson CHA 99.2 90.4 1.6
14 Rhonda Mapp CHA 100.8 91.9 1.5
15 Rebecca Lobo NYL 98.5 88.2 1.5
16 Janice Braxton CLE 97.9 87.7 1.4
17 Eva Nemcova CLE 102.8 94.1 1.2
18 Tamecka Dixon LAS 102.9 97.6 1.0
19 Bridget Pettis PHO 97.7 92.0 0.9
20 Kym Hampton NYL 90.9 85.6 0.8

Yes, Cooper is more dominant in the WNBA than Michael Jordan is in the NBA, which brings me to the next topic...