I posted this in the NBA Playoffs forum, but I thought it would be interesting to talk about here:
Quote:
Allegro Ma Non Troppo
by Corey
It seems to me that when the Cavaliers are on national TV, the announcers like to make the point that a slower tempo would favor the Cavs, while a faster tempo would favor the opponent (depending on the opponent, of course). If you watched Game 1 of the Cavs-Wizards series, you heard ESPN's Dave Pasch and Rick Carlisle make this suggestion several times. I guess the perception is, if you're a "defensive" team (as the Cavs are), your goal is to slow the game down, and if you're an "offensive" team (as the Wizards are—in more ways than one—zing!), your goal is to push the tempo. And while that may or may not be true, I'm fairly certain that "slow" does not equal "defense" and that "fast" does not equal "offense."
Anyway, I would like to put on record the following two scatter plots. The first compares the Cavaliers' offensive performance in each game of the 2007-08 season to the pace factor from that game (essentially, the number of Cavs possessions in the game):
While the pattern here is clearly a graphical representation of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I think it's safe to say the Cavs can score (or not score) as efficiently during an uptempo game as they can during a slow one. The correlation between Cavs offensive efficiency and pace factor is an extremely low 0.018.
The next graph compares defensive performance to pace factor:
Another unshapely blob. The correlation is -0.056 (meaning, if anything, the Cavs defense does better in a faster game).
The Cavs' pace factor for the whole season is 90.2, which ranks them 22nd out of 30 teams. I would be curious to see what these graphics would look like for teams that play at extreme pace factors, say, Denver (99.7, 1st) or Detroit (87.3, 30th). But I only have the individual game data for the Cavs.
Oh, and by the way, the Wizards have the NBA's 4th-slowest pace factor (89.5). Way to know your stuff, ESPN!
|
http://mistakesports.blogspot.com/20...on-troppo.html
The only really surprising thing about this to me is that we have played a higher pace this season than the Wizards. I didn't realize that they played such a slow pace, but I guess so. If I had known that before the series I probably would have thought we had a better chance because I like the way we match up in a slow game.
Funny how this 'pace' argument has been trotted out so many times during this series but actually doesn't hold any ground at all.