More follow-up -- Kevin Pelton notes that 18.0% of WNBA possessions end in turnovers, compared to 13.6% of NBA possessions. He agrees that turnovers are the WNBA's "dirty secret." Kevin offers one theory about the cause:

I wonder if maybe part of the issue is that when women's basketball was in its developmental stages (well, earlier in them), turnovers were very common and that's where coaches learned their ideas, making them more likely to employ turnover-forcing strategies than male coaches.... it's a cycle -- worse ballhandling means more presses, which means more turnovers, which means teams are encouraged by the press, so they teach it more.

Kevin notes again, however, that you can never judge quality of play just by looking at offensive statistics. Quoting the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, he says:

"Batting stats and pitching stats do not indicate the quality of play, merely which part of the struggle is dominant at the moment." That has its applications in basketball. The only truly objective statistical marker is free-throw percentage.

True enough. There is an ongoing debate in NBA circles about the significant decline in scoring. Lots of old folks say kids these days are selfish, don't know how to shoot, don't know how to pass, it was better in our day, yadda yadda yadda.

Maybe there's something to that. (Check this out.) But it has something to do with defense also. When you see NBA games from the early 80s on ESPN Classic, it looks like those skinny dudes out there are hardly playing defense at all.

The same is true for the WNBA and turnovers. It might not be that the W is bad at offense -- it might be that it's just good at defense. From a fan's perspective, however, scoring is fun and turnovers aren't. Right now we have too many turnovers and not enough scoring. We should try to figure out why and do something about it.