There is so much the NWSL does that is worthy of being bitched about, let's stick to that.

I know I'm weird that I like to read things like Competition Rules and CBAs when I receive no tangible benefit from it, but still.

*basically just a league minimum contract with no team bonuses allowed. Teams can sign up to 4 each year

Only one active player who still plays for WAS was on that roster, and for some reason DiDi Haracic started over her. Two players currently on maternity leave for them started, though

Hilariously Rose Lavelle played in that match, too. And a member of Triple Espresso - Mal Swanson. Katie Stengel started and KO came off the bench. WAS GK coach (Barnhart) was there, but she wasn't doing much since, as noted, WAS didn't get any shots on target

Tbh I think the NBA data gets TOO granular because you end up with miniscule datasets that are impossible to generalize from reliably (but people will certainly try!). But who is taking a shot, and who is defending, and where the defenders are. And who's in the net all matter, immensely

Soccer just doesn't have that (publicly, teams absolutely have that data), so instead you get something that would assign the same value to any player on the field taking that shot. It drives me nuts when people talk about that stat as if it's actually meaningful on its own

This is actually my biggest beef with analytics in soccer. In the NBA, you can look up the avg player's pts/shot is from any spot on the floor, which is essentially xG. You can also see how that changes based on the distance from the nearest defender, and on who's shooting, and on who's defending

Came* during starts