The WNBA Board of Governors announced in early December that the league would adopt three new rules changes for the 2006 season � decreasing the shot clock from 30 to 24 seconds, switching from two 20-minute halves to four 10-minute quarters, and doing away with the jump ball at the start of the second half.

The only change that should seriously alter the game is the 24-second shot clock. The switch to four quarters is a relatively cosmetic change, as the game will still take approximately two hours to play, and few will notice the difference that cutting a jump ball out of the equation will have.

Coaches and league officials are being quoted as saying that these changes will speed up the game, which seems obvious, but will a sped up game necessarily translate into a better game? I, for one, fall in to the �skeptical but cautiously optimistic� category, complete with air-quotes.

The best-case scenario with the shot clock is that teams will play a more up-tempo game creating more possessions, more shot attempts, more made shots and more scoring.

The worst-case scenario is that teams will play a more up-tempo game creating more possessions, more turnovers, poorer shot attempts, more missed shots and negligible increases in scoring.

So why am I skeptical? To begin with, the history of the shot clock in other leagues doesn�t suggest that this change will have much of an impact.

The NCAA did not officially introduce the shot clock to men�s college basketball until the 1986 season, and they used a 45 second clock until 1993. Possessions per game had been declining from 1972 (90 per team) to 1982 (71 per team), but had stabilized somewhat during the early �80s. The introduction of the shot clock initially brought with it a slight increase in possessions to about 76 per game during the 1989-91 seasons, but the downward trend picked up again in 1992 and 1993.

The men�s game switched to a 35-second shot clock in 1994, but after a slight bump in possessions that season, the number began to decline again and now stands at around 68 possessions per game. By way of comparison, WNBA teams averaged just under 70 possessions per game in 2005. I don�t think I�ve heard any of my friends who are into men�s college basketball complaining about the slow pace of the game, and the WNBA is actually a faster paced game already.

If you�d like to check out this NCAA information in graphical form, you can do so at http://kenpom.com/blog/index.php/C15/

The good news with regards to the men�s college game is that the reduction in the shot clock hasn�t led to a decrease in shooting percentages.

The NBA implemented the shot clock prior to the 1954-55 season, and immediately saw an increase in the pace of the game and in scoring. This is understandable given that teams of that era would often start stalling in the third quarter of games, leading to the occasional 19-18 yawn-fest like the November 22, 1950 meeting between the Fort Wayne Pistons and the Minneapolis Lakers.

However, over the past 20 to 25 years, the pace of the NBA game has slowed considerably. In 1978, teams averaged just over 105 possessions per 48 minutes, and over the past several seasons, the number has hovered around 90. Every other year or so, the NBA tinkers with its rules in an attempt to increase scoring, but recent changes have had little to no impact.

Another reason for my skepticism is that teams were already playing at a pretty quick pace given the 30-second shot clock. By my calculations, the average play was run in 15.3 seconds last season. By a play I mean anything that the offense does that ends in a field goal attempt, free throw attempt or a turnover. Given that, I�m not sure how many plays will actually be impacted by a shortened shot clock.

I�m also having trouble deciding what the barometer of success will be � how much additional scoring is enough to think that the change worked? Here are the point-per-game averages for each of the first nine WNBA seasons.

WNBA Points Per Game, 1997 - 2005

	PPG
1997	69.2
1998	70.3
1999	69.3
2000	69.0
2001	65.7
2002	67.6
2003	68.1
2004	67.1
2005	67.3

The highest scoring averages came in the league�s first four seasons, and the absolute highest was in 1998. However, the difference from 1998 to 2005 isn�t really that great � three points per team per game. Can anybody honestly say that one extra made free throw for each team every 13 minutes and 20 seconds is going to increase your enjoyment of a particular game? I can�t.

Also, if you talk to anybody who watched a lot of WNBA games during those early days, you would be hard pressed to find one of them who thinks the game was more exciting or more visually appealing back then despite the fact that more points were scored. The reason is that the game was much sloppier in the first years of the W.

WNBA Turnovers Per Game, 1997-2005

	TOPG
1997	18.5
1998	17.0
1999	15.6
2000	15.7
2001	14.9
2002	14.8
2003	14.3
2004	14.6
2005	14.6

Turnovers lead to easier fast break opportunities and to higher scoring totals, but it doesn�t necessarily make for a more visually appealing game. So if scoring increases to 70 points per game, but turnovers increase to 17 per game, is that the kind of trade off we want to see?

Why don�t you guys tell me? What needs to happen in the WNBA in 2006 for us to deem the decrease in the shot clock a success? Shoot me an e-mail at jmaxwell@palacenet.com with your comments, and I�ll post some of them in a later edition of Statistically Speaking.

Maybe we can run a competition of sorts to see who comes closest to guessing what the final league average stat line will look like at the end of �06. So in your e-mail, also try and predict the number of plays each team will average per 40 minutes, the number of points each team will score each game, and the number of turnovers each team will average per game.

The 2005 figures were 78.5 plays, 67.3 points and 14.6 turnovers.