The WNBA introduced a new stat this week that's got a lot of people shaking their heads: the gravity stat. A new stat could be cool, right? It might be fun. But this new stat is generated by AI, and already feels like yet another attempt to encourage the rest of us to stop using our own minds and eyeballs and rely on something a machine generated (all while contributing to the ongoing destruction of the environment we all share) instead.
For the unfamiliar, the NBA explained earlier this year that a gravity stat quantifies "how much a player pulls defenders out of their normal assignments, essentially measuring how much attention they draw compared to what the spacing on the floor predicts." In other words, the stat measures which players are able to significantly change a game by how much they touch the ball — which players bring gravity to the floor and bring more than is expected based on the role they play on the team.
Gravity is HERE 🗣️
— WNBA (@WNBA) May 26, 2026
The W’s first Inside the Game stat, powered by @awscloud, measures the players who shift defenses and change the game with every touch.
Follow along all season as we track the top 5 leaders and how they impact every possession. pic.twitter.com/Dp8aQW1prx
To illustrate that, let's look at the WNBA's latest post on the stat. Sonia Citron, Marina Mabrey, Kayla McBride, Rhyne Howard, and Kahleah Copper are leading the league, something that prompted confusion from fans who are used to seeing other names on the list. Do players like A'ja Wilson and Caitlin Clark have gravity? Yes, and lots of it, but they're expected to, so the impact of that gravity isn't quite as huge as it is for these five.
That, in and of itself, is kind of cool, maybe, especially if you're already into stats and discussing a game that way. It's also something that fans and teams have been doing for decades by way of the good old-fashioned eye test, aka looking at what you're watching or what's happening right in front of your face. And maybe in the big year of 2026 the eye test sounds outdated and unfun to some, but this writer is and will remain a big fan of a group of people getting together, watching the same game, and coming up with their own theories and ideas based on what they've seen.
Who knows? Maybe the gravity stat will end up cool. Maybe I'll eat my words. But introducing this so early in the process — well before the glitches and bugs have been ironed out — is, as a colleague said, a little like introducing the first-ever self-driving car as something that will immediately change how we all operate vehicles. Self-driving cars might, at some point, become the main mode of transportation for a lot of people, but there will always be those of us who love having the ability to hop behind the wheel, turn on our music, and be in control of our own trip.
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