The IX Sports · Basketball
Four seasons of injury reporting in one place: 983 injuries and 3,592 games missed across the 2023 through 2026 WNBA seasons, broken down by body part, team, position and time of year.
01 — Season by season
Injuries remain a significant problem in the WNBA. Total injuries have risen every year since we started tracking them in 2023, and the resulting games missed have also trended in the same direction. This can partially be explained by league and roster expansion, as well as an increase in games over this span.
02 — Adjusted for exposure
Normalizing the data per 1,000 athlete exposures – defined as one athlete appearing in one game, regardless of minutes played – allows for direct data comparison from season to season as it neutralizes the increase in teams, roster size, and games played. Total injuries have risen sharply since 2023, while games missed per 1,000 exposures has stayed roughly flat. The drastic rise in injuries especially compared to games missed can partially be explained by how we define an injury, namely any occurrence in which an athlete appears on the league-mandated injury report with a designated injury, reports to the locker room due to game action, and/or is evaluated by the team athletic trainer. This allows us to register injuries that do not result in game(s) missed.
Rates are published by the tracker. The implied exposure base is roughly 4,570 in 2023, 4,510 in 2024, 5,410 in 2025 and 6,590 in 2026 — about 21,090 across the four seasons.
03 — Where players get hurt
Lower extremity injuries are rampant in the WNBA, which is consistent with research into men’s basketball and other levels of play. Knee and ankle injuries outpace injuries to other body parts, but knee injuries result in significantly more games lost. Total games missed due to knee injuries is over three standard deviations above the average. It’s also likely that these numbers are underestimates. Many teams failed to provide detailed information about a given athlete’s injury, reporting it as simply a “leg” or “lower leg” injury. It’s quite likely that many of these vague injuries were, in fact, knee or ankle injuries.
04 — By team
Total injuries and games missed vary by team, though none have been statistically significantly higher or lower to date. Expansion sides (Golden State, Portland, Toronto) have played fewer tracked seasons, so their cumulative totals are not comparable to the other 12.
05 — Frontcourt vs. backcourt
Backcourt athletes suffer more injuries than frontcourt athletes, but the numbers are a bit misleading. We defined a backcourt athlete as someone who traditionally plays point guard, shooting guard, or wing. As such, approximately 3/5s of the league is a backcourt athlete and, according to our data, backcourt athletes suffer approximately 3/5s of the injuries, meaning the ratio of injuries between backcourt and frontcourt athletes is roughly equal. Additionally, although frontcourt athletes tend to miss more games per injury compared to backcourt athletes, the difference is not statistically meaningful.
06 — The full record
All — individual records behind the numbers above. Search by player, team or injury — typing “ankle” or “ACL” matches the reported description.
| Date | Player | Team | Reported injury | Position | Games missed |
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