It's time to report the Player Efficiency Ratings for WNBA Players once again.  These numbers are the single-valued metric created by John Hollinger which is abbreviated as PER.  I know that there is software that cranks out PER ratings for WNBA players, but since it isn't available to the public I have to crunch my own numbers.  So if the number listed here doesn't match some proprietary data feed - well, one of us is wrong.

Some explanation of PER follows.  PER is a "normalized" metric, meaning that the value is adjusted by a comparison with a player's contemporaries.  The formula which creates PER - and which would constipate Einstein, let me tell you - is set so that 15.00 is the value of the hypothetically average player.  If you have a PER better than 15.00, you're better than average; if you don't, you're not.  Alison Bales of the Atlanta Dream has a 2011 PER which is equal to 15.00 (rounded to two decimal places) and her career PER is about 11.02.  The player with the most average career PER (normalized by minutes played per season) is Sheri Sam at 15.00.

But if your player is better (or worse) than average, then how much worse.  Hollinger suggested the following scale:

    A Year For the Ages: 35.0
    Runaway MVP Candidate: 30.0
    Strong MVP Candidate: 27.5
    Weak MVP Candidate: 25.0
    Bona fide All-Star: 22.5
    Borderline All-Star: 20.0
    Solid 2nd option: 18.0
    3rd Banana: 16.5
    Pretty good player: 15.0
    In the rotation: 13.0
    Scrounging for minutes: 11.0
    Definitely renting: 9.0
    Off to Europe: 5.0

There was no strong MVP candidate this year.  Oddly enough, the player with the best PER in 2011 was Candace Parker with 26.76.  Remember that PER doesn't care how many minutes you play or if you qualify for any league awards; you give it the data and it spits out a number.

The PER MVP this year?  Sylvia Fowles with 26.25.  (If you don't think Fowles deserves it, Angel McCoughtry's 26.05 might impress you.)  The only other player that PER considers an MVP candidate is Penny Taylor with a 25.41 PER.

 Who has the best career PER?  Cynthia Cooper with 28.73.

Who would have been the Rookie of the Year if PER was the be-all and end-all?  PER was more impressed with Elizabeth Cambage (20.87) than Maya Moore (20.35).  There are definitely some criticisms of PER, namely that it doesn't take defense into account very well. (A detailed list of PER's offenses can be found at the Wikipedia article.)


With that in mind, the list of PER for WNBA players follows.  For players who played with two different teams the final PER value is a weighted PER based on minutes with each team.