Speed kills, kids. Unless you’re playing fantasy basketball. Then you want plenty of it.
Playing the pace game in fantasy hoops will help us gain extra possessions and stats for our box scores. Whether you’re playing head-to-head, roto, or points, those extra opportunities pile up over the course of a week and can give us an added edge in our matchups.
This weekly piece will look at interesting Pace trends and preview the teams with the best pace schedules in the upcoming NBA week.
Week 2 Pace Trends
The new teams in first and last in Pace stand out this week as huge movers after the first week and a half of NBA games.
Portland currently sits atop the Pace rankings as of October 29th. Last year, they were 19th. Their fastest individual Pace player is Norman Powell, who they recently lost to injury. How does this impact the team as a whole? Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum seem to have picked it up this year, but this is a VERY important trend for fantasy purposes since Portland currently ranks a strong 12th in defensive rating.
On the opposite end of the spectrum are the Philadelphia 76ers, who have plummeted to 30th in Pace after finishing 12th last year. Reasons? It’s not hard to speculate. No Ben Simmons, bad knees for Joel Embiid, no other dynamic playmakers. Something to keep in mind if you need a streamer moving forward.
After a week and a half, there are now just five of last season’s top-10 in Pace that kept up that habit in the first week and a half this year: Rockets (3rd), Timberwolves (5th), Warriors (9th), Bucks (6th), and Kings (8th). I’ll continue to watch these teams to see if they remain and which others find themselves more consistently in the top ten.
But perhaps more interesting than those that remain are the newcomers to the early top ten that didn’t make the cut last year. Those five teams (Trail Blazers, Lakers, Hornets, Clippers, Celtics) average finish in Pace last season was 21.2 out of 30 teams. Are these teams making a philosophical switch? I’ll be watching.
More data in the weeks to come will help us shape this story more completely moving forward.
Positive Pace: Week 2
Below are some teams with the best Pace opportunities in the week ahead. Use this as a guide for players on the waiver wire or filling your bench from teams in good game environments. I will typically trend towards teams with four to five games per week on the positive side and three games on the negative. Each opponents’ Pace rank is in parentheses.
Charlotte Hornets: CLE (21st), @GSW (9th), @SAC (8th), @LAC (7th)
The Hornets have five players in the top 30 overall in individual Pace this season (Gordon Hayward, Ish Smith, Mason Plumlee, Miles Bridges, and LaMelo Ball). Even with Terry Rozier dealing with an injury, it seems the coaching staff have turned the keys to the sports car over to LaMelo and told him, “Have fun, kid.” They get a fun swing through the West next week with several must-see matchups on tap.
Houston Rockets: @LAL (2nd), @PHX (12th), @DEN (18th), @GSW (9th)
A swing through the West Coast should provide for some very fast-paced games for the Rockets and their youth movement. But this could also serve as a cautionary tale to not be too dependent upon Pace as tiebreakers in fantasy. The Rockets are consistently near the top of the charts in Pace, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they produce with Pace. If they put up more games like Thursday (91 points on 32.6% shooting), we will have to pump the brakes on borderline plays from that team.
Negative Pace: Week 2
These are teams, all things being equal, you might want to avoid in the upcoming week. They only play three games and will have their possessions limited by lower-paced teams.
Brooklyn Nets: ATL (23rd), @DET (20th), @TOR (27th)
This is not the start to the season either Brooklyn or their fans wanted. A 2-3 record, still battling with Kyrie Irving, James Harden struggling, and now a slog of a week against two tough defensive squads in Atlanta and Toronto. Brooklyn somehow is maintaining a top-12 Pace this season (11th), but I am watching this team closer than any other. Can Harden and Kevin Durant keep dragging the carcasses of Blake Griffin, LaMarcus Aldridge, and Paul Millsap up and down the floor every night?
Chicago Bulls: @BOS (10th), @PHI (30th), PHI (30th)
We need some more data on Zach LaVine and how he will play with this thumb injury to determine what’s going to happen to Chicago now that their 4-0 win streak to open the season is busted. LaVine scored 25 on Thursday, albeit on just 41% shooting. He’s the engine of this team, and they have a tough road ahead with some grinding Eastern Conference playoff contenders.
What To Watch For Next Week
The Lakers have three of the top five individual Pace players in the week through the first 10 days. Russell Westbrook, Anthony Davis, and Kent Bazemore have guided the Lakers to second overall in Pace so far, but that seems to be something LeBron James is comfortable doing with this team.
James never had an individual Pace number over 99 until he joined the Lakers. Since that time, he has not been under 100.4. Similar to the Nets, however, it remains to be seen if the Lakers can keep this up. They were 21st in Pace last season. Not that this means much for the Big Three in fantasy, they’re universal starters. But it’s more about their opponents moving forward. If you had the foresight to stream OKC players against them Wednesday, you were likely rewarded.
The Lakers’ Pace moving forward is something to monitor.
