[BostonCard]

Interesting... For those who are arguing that we should change our offense...

Which is to say: they don't correlate. At all. There are fast-paced teams with great offenses, there are fast-paced teams with horrible offenses. There are slow teams with excellent offenses, there are slow teams with godawful offenses. The performance trendline actually goes down as pace goes up but the correlation itself is so weak that calling it "insignificant" is giving it too much credit. You might make a case that, if you squint, better offenses are more evenly distributed across the range of pace while crappy offenses tend to cluster a little closer around the average. Otherwise, this is almost a textbook example of what statistical independence looks like.

And of course, teams getting faster sacrifice defensive efficiency (this is efficiency, not overall stats, so the increased number of plays only becomes an issue in that the defense can get more tired)

This is what a real correlation of first derivatives looks like: teams that don't change much tend to cluster around the middle, but teams that speed up a lot tend to lose defensive efficiency while teams that slow down a lot tend to gain it. Of special note: teams that hurry up their average play by 4 seconds or more in a single season almost all lose defensive efficiency.

BC

[BostonCard]

Interesting... For those who are arguing that we should change our offense...

Which is to say: they don't correlate. At all. There are fast-paced teams with great offenses, there are fast-paced teams with horrible offenses. There are slow teams with excellent offenses, there are slow teams with godawful offenses. The performance trendline actually goes down as pace goes up but the correlation itself is so weak that calling it "insignificant" is giving it too much credit. You might make a case that, if you squint, better offenses are more evenly distributed across the range of pace while crappy offenses tend to cluster a little closer around the average. Otherwise, this is almost a textbook example of what statistical independence looks like.

And of course, teams getting faster sacrifice defensive efficiency (this is efficiency, not overall stats, so the increased number of plays only becomes an issue in that the defense can get more tired)

This is what a real correlation of first derivatives looks like: teams that don't change much tend to cluster around the middle, but teams that speed up a lot tend to lose defensive efficiency while teams that slow down a lot tend to gain it. Of special note: teams that hurry up their average play by 4 seconds or more in a single season almost all lose defensive efficiency.

BC