Earlier this year in Indiana, two great ballplayers hung up their shoes. Stephanie White retired at 27, Reggie Miller at 39.
The coincidence got me thinking. Do W players really leave the game earlier? Among this year's other announced retirements, the Pest departed at 38. Semeka Randall decided to quit at 25. So did Stacey Dales-Schuman.
But announced retirements are neither a very large, nor anything close to a representative, sample. Many, probably most, players leave the league when one team cuts them and nobody else picks them up. (The same holds for the NBA.) Other players leave without announcing it, either because they think they might change their minds next year, or because they want to keep playing overseas.
How to get real numbers? I asked Kevin Pelton, who blogs for the Storm and the Sonics. He came through with all the numbers we could ever use.
Unless I've misread Kevin's data, WNBA players who left the game after 2003 had a mean age of 27.7 years, and a mean career length of 3.7 seasons. (A few of these players might return, as Lovelace and DeForge did, but right now we count them as retired.)
NBA players who left the game after the 2003-04 men's season had a mean age of 30.1 years, a mean career length of 7.1 NBA seasons, or 5.1 seasons if you count only from 1996-7. (That adjusted count may give better data, since the real mean career length includes people like Reggie Miller, and no WNBA player could yet have a career that long.)
Age numbers haven't changed much over seven years. WNBA age numbers range from 26.3 (after 1997) to 28.8 (after 1999, due perhaps to an exodus of disillusioned former ABL players). NBA age numbers range from 29.7 to 31. NBA mean career length appears to be climbing (from 5.6 real, non-adjusted, in '97); WNBA mean career length is climbing, too-- this year's figure is an all-time high, though it's still behind the real (non-adjusted) number the men logged when the WNBA began.
So women really do have shorter pro careers than men, consistently (so far), by a couple of seasons; this difference has been there since the WNBA (and the ABL) began, and it doesn't seem to be going away.
Why is that? Some thoughts on this topic soon.
The coincidence got me thinking. Do W players really leave the game earlier? Among this year's other announced retirements, the Pest departed at 38. Semeka Randall decided to quit at 25. So did Stacey Dales-Schuman.
But announced retirements are neither a very large, nor anything close to a representative, sample. Many, probably most, players leave the league when one team cuts them and nobody else picks them up. (The same holds for the NBA.) Other players leave without announcing it, either because they think they might change their minds next year, or because they want to keep playing overseas.
How to get real numbers? I asked Kevin Pelton, who blogs for the Storm and the Sonics. He came through with all the numbers we could ever use.
Unless I've misread Kevin's data, WNBA players who left the game after 2003 had a mean age of 27.7 years, and a mean career length of 3.7 seasons. (A few of these players might return, as Lovelace and DeForge did, but right now we count them as retired.)
NBA players who left the game after the 2003-04 men's season had a mean age of 30.1 years, a mean career length of 7.1 NBA seasons, or 5.1 seasons if you count only from 1996-7. (That adjusted count may give better data, since the real mean career length includes people like Reggie Miller, and no WNBA player could yet have a career that long.)
Age numbers haven't changed much over seven years. WNBA age numbers range from 26.3 (after 1997) to 28.8 (after 1999, due perhaps to an exodus of disillusioned former ABL players). NBA age numbers range from 29.7 to 31. NBA mean career length appears to be climbing (from 5.6 real, non-adjusted, in '97); WNBA mean career length is climbing, too-- this year's figure is an all-time high, though it's still behind the real (non-adjusted) number the men logged when the WNBA began.
So women really do have shorter pro careers than men, consistently (so far), by a couple of seasons; this difference has been there since the WNBA (and the ABL) began, and it doesn't seem to be going away.
Why is that? Some thoughts on this topic soon.
posted by Jessie B at 3:21 PM
