On this day 16 years ago, the WNBA made some serious changes to its rule book.
The Board of Governors announced three major alterations to the way the league would play. First, the three-point line was moved back from 19 feet, 9 inches (6.0198 meters) to 20 feet, 6.25 inches (6.25475 meters). Second, the lane was widened from 12 feet to 16 feet, matching the measurement used in the NBA. Last, shot clock resets after defensive fouls or other defensive violations changed to 20 seconds if they happened after that mark as opposed to the full reset to 30 seconds that was used previously. Full resets continued if the foul or violation happened before 20 seconds or fewer remained on the shot clock.
The reasoning behind the changes was to increase the space WNBA offenses had to work with, specifically down low.
“The intent behind these changes is to increase our teams’ offensive productivity,” WNBA Director of Basketball Operations Tracy Ellis-Ward told the Seattle Times in 2003. “Increasing the width of the lane and the length of the three-point line are both designed to clear out space in the post so that offensive players will have greater freedom of movement.”
Teams in the WNBA averaged 68.1 points per game in the 2003 season, a half-point increase from the campaign before, according to the Seattle Times. That number went down in 2004 after the rules were immediately implemented, dropping to 67.1 points per game, and there wasn’t much of a change in 2005, either. This led to the WNBA taking even more drastic measures in 2005, like shrinking the shot clock to 24 seconds, which did make a massive impact in scoring that were felt immediately in 2006.
The average amount of points scored by a WNBA team in 2019 was 78.7, and the lowest scoring team in the league, the Atlanta Dream, still posted 71.2 points per outing, even more than the average team in 2003.
