Hello everyone! It’s Maddy, back with my newest blog post. I’m reaching the final quarter of my PhD, so I won’t always have time to write the longest posts, but I’m working on keeping it a habit 🙂 Thanks for being here as I learn how to write!
This week I asked my instagram followers for some questions. Thanks to everyone that replied. I will answer those here >
instagram story asking for questions
These are the questions I received, in order, with my answers:
what’s ur fav probability distribution
I haven’t thought much about this before, but my initial thought is NOT the normal/gaussian distribution (useful, but boring, common, and cursed)
Apparently I used to make a lot of videos about the poisson distribution (brand new sentence).
I once used the poisson distribution to calculate the probability of wnba expansion in 2023 (why did I do that? genuine question)
@wnbadata What are the chances of WNBA expansion in the next 5 years? Video is from the Washington Mystics. For entertainment purposes only; math ca... See more
I also have one where I calculate the probability of Breanna Stewart scoring a certain number of points or something:
My videos have come a long way in the last 3+ years but honestly I’m still kinda into these old ones.
So in conclusion, I’ll go with poisson!
How do you get cbb data?
I tend to use the wehoop R package to get cbb data (same with wnba data)
I believe this package pulls the data from ESPN’s API. You can use it to get player and team box scores, as well as play-by-play!
wehoop R package logo
After you install the package in R, you can quickly download the data tables you need. Note that it defaults to downloading the current season, unless specified:
library(wehoop)
#load play-by-play
wbb_pbp <- wehoop::load_wbb_pbp()
#load team box scores (will produce two rows for each game)
wbb_team_box <- wehoop::load_wbb_team_box()
#load player box scores (players may have a row even if they didn't play in the game)
wbb_player_box <- wehoop::load_wbb_player_box()Sadly, it doesn’t go further back than like 2004, so wehoop doesn’t solve that common issue with NCAAW stats only going back so far in history 😕 (usually stats are cited as “since 2000” or something like that) But it does help me a ton in my analysis.
Outside of wehoop, Her Hoop Stats and Sports Reference are great for clicking around, exploring specific players/teams/games stats, and filtering data! I even got to work on helping Sports Reference expand their historical women’s college basketball stats when I was an intern for them in 2024.
“Politics” aka speaking your morals being in sports. Idk something about that.
This question is pretty broad, but I feel like being involved in women’s sports is inherently political. The whole history of women’s sports is people having to fight just to exist in the first place (including trans women now, who I think should absolutely be allowed to play). So anyway, ICE is stupid and so was the US men’s hockey team recently, and I’m also not really sure what to think or believe about Project B and their ties (or not‑ties) to Saudi Arabia yet. I don’t have perfect phrasing for everything, but I do think it would be stupid to pretend that sports are apolitical.
Maybe thrift tips too lol
You gotta go on weekdays! I honestly just go to the thrift stores way too often, and the more you go, the higher chance you’ll have to find something unique. I also look a lot at the toy section, that’s where I tend to find wnba/wbb collectibles. I think being in Seattle, a city with a wnba team, certainly helps as well.
I usually post my wnba thrift finds on my instagram stories!
wbb thrift finds from the last few weeks: Lauren Jackson funko pop, Charlisse Leger-Walker wsu bobble head, Seattle Storm notebook with the old logo, LA Sparks rainbow logo T shirt
How do you talk about this page/project on your resume/cv?
I can just show you what my resume says! It isn’t perfect but it has worked ok for me so far. When I’ve applied to sports analytics positions, I put this section at the beginning right after education. I like to think my Instagram page could speak for itself, but the resume entry gives me a chance to highlight the more technical aspects of my content creation, and the storytelling and math communication sides as well.
“Basketball Data Researcher and Storyteller @wnbadata” section of my resume.
What was your goal when you started your channel?
My initial goal really was to fill the gap that I noticed in WNBA-related content online. I was getting really into the WNBA and sports analytics in 2022, but it didn’t seem like there was a lot of content related to the intersection of the two (still true tbh). So after finding out that @wnbadata was available on TikTok, I felt like it was just something I had to do :)
I had also known for a while that I wanted to learn more about “data science” and “data analysis”, and I knew that I needed to get started on some real-world projects, but I just didn’t know how or what data to use. Creating wnbadata gave me the motivation to actually start doing some data projects and start building a portfolio.
In the last 3+ years I have definitely succeeded in learning more data science through my content creation, so it has for sure been worth it!
is lisa leslie the goat
idk about that but she was definitely the goat when the wnba did this weird animation in 2021 (volume up):
What’s your favorite individual defensive metric? Which metrics are misleading?
I don’t think I’ve met the perfect defensive metric yet, but I do support defensive box plus minus, at least on the college side. Anecdotally from watching Jayda Noble at UW, it seemed to capture and give her credit for her defensive impact on the court, even when her offense wasn’t really offensing. I’m sure there are more defensive metrics out there that don’t rely on box scores in leagues with tracking data, but the WNBA won’t give them to us!!
In a slight contradiction to what I just said, I sometimes feel like any metrics that try to sum up a player in one number can be a little misleading, or at least not perfect. All stats and numbers have context behind them, and stripping all the context from the performance for just one number is not how I like to think about analytics. We can definitely look at stuff like win shares if we need to, but we should also consider the greater context of the team and the situation the player is in. If a good player is on a bad team, that might reflect negatively on their individual summary metrics.
I’d love to know if there’s anything you have your eye on for the next wnba season— stats/stories/etc
For the next wnba season, I mostly want to be more involved with what teams actually do and what stats/analytics they care about. I love focusing on the data storytelling for sure, but I’m also curious to know what teams and coaches really care about and look at (please hire me)
I’m crossing my fingers that the wnba will release more tracking-related stats soon too 🤞
@wnbadata back in 2021, the WNBA tested live tracking on the Commissioner’s Cup broadcast; wearables, speed, distance, even PS2‑looking 3D replays. ... See more
How do you feel about coach Tina?
I love Tina. I feel like UW could pick up the pace a little bit (literally) but at least the shot clock violations have slowed down the last couple years (i think).
random ladies on youtube hated this video I made to figure out Tina’s height in 2024:
That’s all the questions I’m answering for today! This was fun to put together. If you liked this format, I’m happy to do more “mailbags” in future posts, so feel free to send me other questions about women’s bball, stats, or creator life whenever they pop into your head.
If you have a question you’d like me to answer next time, you can drop it in my DMs! (im bad at checking tiktok so make it instagram)