WOWYR is a regressed study of game-level data in an effort to measure player impact. Unlike RAPM which requires play-by-play data, WOWYR can be created knowing only which players are in the game and which aren’t along with their minutes. For a detailed explanation of how WOWYR works, refer to this page.

The beauty of WOWYR is that it can cover all of NBA history and as such is the only impact stat that is available for those early legends. In the future, I plan to run my own study that goes all the way until the present day. The existing dataset from Thinking Basketball is from the 1956-57 to the 2015-16 season. The cutoff for player inclusion is averaging at least 25 minutes per game and having at least 10 seasons played.