Basketball is a sport of many dimensions, and that’s why it draws so much intrigue and adoration. As analytics has come to the forefront of traditional sports, we have been able to understand a lot more about how the game works. But, with the hubris akin to all humans, we continually try to master the unwieldy and conquer the unconquerable. And that’s what I’ve been up to lately; I’ve been trying to draw a direct correlation between a single statistic to fantasy basketball value.

I’ve specifically been looking at each NBA team’s pace, which is defined as the number of possessions a team uses per game. A possession is further defined as the time in which a team gains offensive possession of the ball until it scores, loses the ball, or commits a violation or foul. My hypothesis was that the higher a team’s pace, the more fantasy value should be produced given the increased opportunity to fill up nine category stats. In order to evaluate this hypothesis, I had to dig into the grimy depths of statistics.

Read on to see what I discovered!

Pace Pace Baby – A Mini-Study on NBA Team Pace

To quantify value of a team, I used Basketball Monster’s ranking system for nine-categories and I took the ranks for the top five players on each team based off the highest average minutes played per game. After taking the average of those ranks, I created a benchmark called Top 5 Team Rank (T5TR). I felt like this would be a good cumulative glimpse of a team’s production. This is what I would be using to compare against team pace. Below, you will see the aggregation of T5TR and the initial test of Pace on T5TR.

The first run shows that there is not a linear correlation between pace and T5TR, and that there are underlying factors that could be manipulating T5TR. It is noteworthy to point out that the bottom five ranked teams in the league are spread out across pace, but the top ranked teams have high pace. I returned to the definition of possession, realizing that there are too many factors impacting pace. I pulled out statistics that I thought could have a major impact on pace: turnover percentage (turnovers per 100 plays) [TOV%], personal fouls per game [PF/game], offensive rating (points scored per 100 plays) [OFFRTG], and defensive rating (opponents’ points scored per 100 plays) [DEFRTG].

The stats highlighted in yellow indicate that these are the bottom five in their category in the league, and the stats highlighted in green indicate the top five teams in their category in the league. I ran tests of pace against each of the four inner stats to see if there could be correlation drawn, and some connection could be found that I wasn’t expecting.

The results show that most teams with high TOV% have high pace, which isn’t that telling. But turnovers obviously bring down a team’s T5TR, given turnovers is a whole category in fantasy basketball. This explains the T5TR of teams like the Lakers, Phoenix, and Sacramento. Next, with pace on personal fouls per game, one notices a bit more correlation. It also seems that younger, less defensively disciplined teams tend to foul more (Memphis, Philadelphia). The test that seemed to give away more information was pace on OFFRTG. Here one notices a split begin to open as pace increases. The teams that play with high pace, but have low OFFRTG are the teams with bad T5TR, but vice-versa, the teams that play with high pace and high OFFRTG (Houston, Golden State, New Orleans) seem to have higher T5TR. Lastly, pace on DEFRTG shows that stronger defenses seem to have lower paces, but defense seems to have the least correlation with T5TR.

To conclude, there are some team observations that I’d like to point out. The Lakers have the highest pace in the league, but are awful in offense, fouling, and turnovers, which really puts a damper on their T5TR. Teams like Phoenix and Sacramento follow suit. Golden State stands out on the opposite end of the spectrum with high pace and high everything else. Memphis is exceptionally slow, and they are pretty below average in all categories. The curious cases to me are Utah and Miami, both of which have really slow paces but are average in the other categories. It may take more detailed research to uncover those two teams.

But for the most part, I’ve concluded that pace is not a cure-all to finding out a team’s fantasy value because there are too many inner layers that create pace. But if one looks at how teams stack up according to intermediary stats like the four shown in this study, one would have a better chance to evaluate for value (see Minnesota and Philadelphia) Although the research isn’t terribly conclusive, it’s worth trying out. Unless you have a star player for the Lakers, Grizzlies, Kings, or Suns, I would stay away from their players. Also somebody tell Jason Kidd to stop playing Giannis Antetokounmpo so many minutes, we don’t want him hurt EVER!

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