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Neil Paine
Two weeks have passed since the WNBA returned from its Olympic break, and the league’s stars are already focused on the start of the playoffs in less than a month.
Players have produced seven games of 30-plus points since the break, while Caitlin Clark set the all-time rookie assist record and Angel Reese recorded three separate 20-plus rebound games. If 2023 was an unprecedented year for big numbers across the WNBA, 2024 has taken it to an even higher level.
Against that backdrop, it’s time to once again check in on this year’s rookie class, headlined by Clark and Reese. As always, we’ll be ranking the first-year phenoms based on their total Consensus Wins added, using an average of the following advanced value metrics: Basketball-Reference’s Win Shares (WS), Estimated Wins Added from Player Efficiency Rating (PER) and wins generated via Estimated RAPTOR, a plus/minus-style stat that accounts for both a player’s individual production and her effect on her team’s net rating during a game.
Since each metric has its own points of emphasis — PER likes volume scoring and WS likes efficiency, while RAPTOR prizes on-court impact — a blend of the three should give us a holistic view of which players have been producing the most so far this season.
And to see what each player has been good (or bad) at, we’ll also list her 0-100 percentile ratings relative to the league in scoring (based on points per 100 possessions), true shooting percentage, passing (based on assist rate), rebounding rate and defensive impact (based on both RAPTOR and defensive rating).
Let’s get to the rankings among active (i.e., non-injured) qualified players — those who have played at least 10 minutes per team game. All rankings and stats are through Aug. 27:
Last Ranked: No. 1 | Draft pick: No. 7 (LSU)Win Shares: 3.0 | PER Wins: 3.8 | RAPTOR Wins: 3.0 | Consensus: 3.3
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