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.
Pace Trends
There was just some mild shuffling of teams in the top 10 and bottom five of Pace this past week, as the teams begin to settle in and refine their identities through this first month of the season. The top then in Pace through 3.5 weeks are:
Lakers
Rockets
Hornets
Suns
Warriors
Spurs
Clippers
Kings
Timberwolves.
Meanwhile, the Knicks, Heat, Nuggets, Raptors, and 76ers round out the bottom five.
I thought I would focus on one team that has mystified NBA fans to this point: the Lakers. Los Angeles sits at 7-5 presently including some bad losses and just a two-point win against a 1-10 Houston team at home. You can see above that Los Angeles is first in Pace. But that doesn’t tell the whole story.
The Lakers have five of the top 16 individual players in Pace (among those playing 20+ minutes per night). Often when you see a team running at this pace you find them on the bottom of the defensive ratings as well. The Hornets, Kings, and Rockets all fit that mold this year. But the Lakers are up at 13th. Why?
They do not have a single player in the bottom 60 in defensive rating this season. The amount of points the Lakers give up (LA allows the third-most points per game in the league) are purely a result of the frantic pace of possessions and not defensive liabilities. That should give Lakers fans and backers hope that they can control a game with their offense and defense.
The Lakers with the Big Three may be legit. They just need to get healthy to prove it.
Positive Pace: Week 4
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.
Detroit Pistons: SAC (7th), IND (22nd), GSW (5th), LAL (1st)
Four home games against three of the top seven Pace teams. The Pacers throw a wrench into an otherwise perfect week, but Indiana does rank just 21st in defensive rating, so it’s not all bad news. With Kelly Olynyk out for several weeks, you will want to deploy or acquire Jerami Grant and Isaiah Stewart wherever possible.
Dallas Mavericks: DEN (28th), @PHX (4th), @PHX (4th), @LAC (8th)
The Mavericks get one of those weird scheduling quirks by playing in Phoenix for back-to-back games this coming week. But those last three games are huge pace-up spots for the 23rd-ranked Mavericks.
Negative Pace: Week 4
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.
Charlotte Hornets: WAS (18th), IND (22nd), @ATL (15th)
You’re still playing your Hornets studs, but it’s a potential disappointing fantasy week after recent games against the Lakers, Warriors, Kings, and Clippers. Similar to the Lakers, the Hornets have six players in the top 30 in individual Pace this season, so the hope is the Hornets dictate the Pace of these games, especially the two at home.
Philadelphia 76ers: @UTAH (24th), @DEN (28th), @POR (12th)
The 76ers rank 30th in Pace for the third consecutive week, so any matchup is technically a Pace upgrade. But these upcoming matchups will be a slog to watch. Get ready for some 97-91 scores next week as both Utah and Denver are top-ten in defensive rating this year.
What To Watch For Next Week
I can’t quite figure out why yet, but the overall Pace in the league has taken a downshift lately. The Lakers’ league-leading Pace of 103.35 would be the lowest league leader since 2017-2018. Seventeen of 30 teams are below the “average” Pace threshold of 100.0.
This could be a product of teams slowing it down and taking it easy after two shortened seasons back to back. Perhaps it is the new foul rules leading to fewer fouls being called, meaning defenses can square up on players better. Whatever it is, it is something to monitor so as to manage the expectations of fantasy players in certain spots.
