SI:AM | The Numbers Behind the WNBA’s Skyrocketing Offense

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I can’t say I’m surprised by how FIFA’s scheme to sell control of the World Cup is playing out. European nations voted unanimously to boycott the World Cup. Concacaf (of which the United States is a member) also rejected the proposal. And yet FIFA and its president, Gianni Infantino, are still stubbornly pressing forward.

In today’s SI:AM:
🤠 Breer’s notes from Cowboys camp
⚾ Verducci’s trade deadline preview
🏀 WNBA rookies who could impact the playoffs

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The WNBA’s offensive revolution

Everybody’s talking about the Indiana Fever these days. And who could blame them? After all, the Fever are in the midst of the greatest offensive season in WNBA history.

In all seriousness, the out-of-control culture war discourse surrounding Indiana’s Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham has distracted from the truly sublime basketball the team has been playing. The Fever visit the Fire tonight in Portland with a chance to extend what is already the longest streak of 100-point games in WNBA history. Indiana has reached the century mark in four straight games, surpassing the previous record of three in a row, and scored at least 100 in seven of its last 11 games.

The Fever’s league-leading 95.8 points per game is the highest scoring average of any team in WNBA history. They also currently hold the mark for points per 100 possessions.

But it isn’t just the Fever who are lighting up the scoreboard. Scoring is way, way up in the WNBA this season. Teams are averaging 87.2 points per game, up from 81.7 per game last season. That alone should be enough to illustrate just how much the offensive environment has changed, but here are a few other fun facts about the league’s offensive outburst:

There have already been 72 games this season in which a team has scored at least 100 points, double the previous record of 36 such games set in 2023. And there’s still almost two months remaining in the regular season.
There have been eight non-overtime games in which both teams scored at least 100 points, something that only happened six times in the league’s first 20 seasons.
Only five teams in the first 20 years of the league’s history scored as many points per game as the average team has this season.
Seven of the 14 highest team scoring averages in WNBA history belong to teams this season.
The Fever have had 12 100-point games, one more than the previous record set by the Aces in 2023.

Scoring is also trending upward in the NBA, but not nearly as drastically as it is in the W. NBA teams averaged 115.6 points per game last season, the most since the 1976 ABA merger. But that was a modest increase over the previous high of 114.7 per game set in 2022–23. That’s an increase of 0.8%. In the W, meanwhile, scoring has risen by 5.3% compared to the previous full-season high of 82.8 points per game in 2018. (Teams averaged 83.1 points per game in the abbreviated 2020 bubble season.)

A'ja Wilson shoots the ball — Four-time MVP A'ja Wilson is leading the league with 26.4 points per game. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

In fact, scoring is on the increase across the basketball landscape. Division I men’s college teams averaged 75.9 points per game last season, the most since the run-and-gun days of the early 1990s. For D-I women’s teams, scoring was at its highest level in more than a decade.

That makes sense. The analytics revolution of the past decade or so has prompted teams to optimize their offensive strategies. Low-reward mid-range jumpers are out. Three-pointers are on the rise. It’s happening as much in the WNBA as it is in other leagues, but that isn’t enough to explain the W’s massive scoring leap. Yes, WNBA teams are taking more of their shots from behind the arc than ever before (32.3%, according to Her Hoop Stats), but it’s only a slight increase compared to last season (32.1%), when teams averaged about six fewer points per game.

But there are a couple of WNBA-specific explanations that make more sense.

First of all, the league has expanded from 12 teams to 15 over the past two seasons. The Valkyries joined the league last season, followed by the Fire and Tempo this year. But the scoring increase isn’t the result of lousy expansion teams getting blown out. In fact, Golden State is among the best teams in the league, while Toronto and Portland have been respectable. However, expansion does mean that players who wouldn’t have been good enough to earn a roster spot in previous seasons are now sprinkled throughout the league.

The biggest explanation for why teams are scoring more, though, is a change in the way games have been officiated this season. WNBA players and coaches had complained in recent years that the game was too physical. (The number of foul calls per game had fallen to historically low levels in 2024 and ’25.) In response, the league formed an officiating task force in the offseason. The group recommended a variety of changes to how games should be called, the most significant of which was an emphasis on freedom of movement.

Officiating is still a source of complaints, but the impact has been obvious. Foul calls have increased from 17.5 per game last season to 20.2 this year, and as a result, free throw attempts are up from 18.2 per game last year to 21.2 this season. (Those numbers are the highest since the 2008 and ‘16 seasons, respectively.) The tighter whistles have also incentivized players to play more cautious defense. The combination of those two factors makes the most sense as the primary driver of the spike in offense.

Sports leagues are always trying to find ways to increase offense and drive fan interest. The WNBA, through a combination of organic changes in strategy and officiating intervention, has done just that. The players are better than they’ve ever been, and they’re putting up jaw-dropping numbers on a nightly basis. Now all the league needs is for people to pay as much attention to how good the basketball is as they do to all the off-court nonsense.

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The top five…

… things I saw yesterday:
5. Kentucky offensive lineman Coleton Price’s impressively accurate drawing of a vintage Wildcats logo.
4. An outstanding diving stop and ridiculously strong throw by Cardinals shortstop Masyn Winn.
3. A great sliding catch in center by the Cubs’ Pete Crow-Armstrong. He makes a highlight reel defensive play every game.
2. Nationals infielder Luis García Jr.’s towering home run against the Braves that soared all the way out of the stadium. (Statcast measured it at 455 feet, which seems conservative.)
1. Kody Clemens’s walk-off grand slam. Not all walk-off grand slams are created equal. If you hit a homer in a tie game and the bases happen to be loaded, that’s a lot less exciting than what Clemens did. Minnesota was trailing 3–0 with two outs in the ninth and Clemens was facing an 0–2 count. He jumped all over a hanging slider and cleared the 23-foot wall in right.

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