The WNBA Competition Committee is meeting in New York City this week, so before any new rules changes come down the pike, we thought we�d take a final look back at last year�s switch from a 30- to a 24-second shot clock to see how it impacted the game.

Proponents of the shot clock reduction claimed that it would increase scoring which would lead to a more exciting brand of basketball. Detractors acknowledged that scoring would increase due to the increased number of possessions, but feared that it would lead to a sloppier brand of basketball.

Thankfully, those fears proved to be unwarranted as team scoring rose from 67.3 points per game in 2005 to 75.2 in 2006 � an increase of nearly eight points per team, per game � while team turnovers rose from 14.6 per game in 2005 to just 15.7 in 2006. Eight additional points scored with just one additional turnover is a more then amenable exchange.

With a shorter shot clock giving teams more possessions per game, it was only natural that things like scoring, rebounding, turnovers, etc. would increase, however looking at more sophisticated statistics, we see that team's offensive output didn't just increase, it improved.

	2005	2006
Poss/40	69.3	76.7
OER	96.3	97.5
EffFG%	.459	.464
ORPct	.308	.303
TO%	.209	.203
FT/FGA	.244	.238

OER, which stands for Offensive Efficiency Rating and is displayed in a points scored per 100 possessions format, is the best way to measure a team�s overall offensive performance, and as you can see from the above chart, overall offensive efficiency improved from 96.3 to 97.5

Even more amazing is that team�s shooting percentages, represented here by their Effective Field Goal Percentage, actually improved, and their percentage of turnovers declined.

Breaking Effective Field Goal Percentage down into its two primary components � two-point field goal percentage and three-point field goal percentage � we see that three-point field goal percentage decreased ever so slightly, and two-point field goal percentage increase a bit. We also can see from the distribution of shots that a much higher percentage of shots this season were taken from three-point range.

	2005	2006
2G%	.447	.452
3G%	.337	.335
%3GA	.205	.235