HITTING THE GAS
EVEN IF IT DOESN’T ENSURE WINS, PACE OF PLAY IS UP — AND WITH IT STATS LIKE WESTBROOK’S AND HARDEN’S
A quarter of the way through this season, Rockets guard James Harden and Oklahoma City Thunder guard Russell Westbrook are gripping NBA fans with their individual frenzies of offense. Their performances have anointed them Most Valuable Player award finalists, linked them with legendary players and changed them from superstars to spectacles. Their clash in Oklahoma City on Friday night may lead to a torrential confluence, like converging storms.
Their mutual dominance, despite the awesome force and flair on display, is less of an outlier than it appears. It has obscured a league-wide trend elevating (or inflating, some may argue) all statistics: the pace of play has increased incrementally since 2010.
This season, teams are generating the most possessions per game in 24 years. More possessions means more chances for passes, points, rebounds, turnovers and so on.
“That’s one of the best ways to win,” said Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni, a luminary on the subject.
Coaches and executives often credit him for popularizing fast-paced offense, most noticeably with his mid-2000s Phoenix teams.
What D’Antoni innovated more than a decade ago has become commonplace and, in some
cases, enhanced. He offered the last two champions, the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers, as clear signs of the commitment to pace.
“Every team now is trying to copy Golden State or Cleveland, and trying to do the best they can with what they’ve got,” he said.
A rule established entering the 2004-05 season barred defenders from hand-checking, which gave offensive players more room to work. That, plus dramatically improved 3-point shooting and the versatility of tall forwards have fueled offenses like nitrous oxide in a drag race. This pads player statistics.
“They all go up,” D’Antoni said.
This does not necessarily diminish the stellar play of Harden (with per game averages of 28.5 points, 11.4 assists and 7.5 rebounds) and Westbrook (31, 11.3 and 10.9). It helps put their numbers in historical perspective.
In some regards, they are outperforming all-time greats.
Harden became the first player with 300 points and 120 assists through the first 10 games. Westbrook is the first player since Oscar Robertson to average a triple-double this far into a season, while —astoundingly — playing nine fewer minutes and, according to ESPN, using 26 fewer possessions per game than Robertson.
The points Harden and Westbrook are generating by scoring and assisting teammates — 56.1 for Harden and 57 for Westbrook — will be the most by far for any players in history if they hold up.
Shades of early 1990s
Pace, which is measured as the number of possessions per 48 minutes, has fluctuated for decades. Shortly after Robertson’s peak, teams in the early 1970s averaged about 108 possessions. By the late 1990s, teams drastically slowed the game to around 90.
The current rate of 97 possessions is similar to the early 1990s. Harden’s and Westbrook’s averages do not look so unusual when compared with John Stockton’s 14 assists, Dennis Rodman’s 18 rebounds or Michael Jordan’s 33 points during that era.
A fan of the churning and elbowing teams that succeeded in the late 1990s, like the Miami Heat and New York Knicks, might consider today’s statistics inflated. On the other hand, D’Antoni, who played in the 1970s and inspired modern offenses to score in 7 seconds or less, gauges his team’s potential chiefly on ramping up the pace.
“That’s the biggest transition right now,” Rockets guard Pat Beverly said. “It’s the brand of basketball that my coach and my generation is in, and we have to take full advantage of it.”
Beverly bemoans the freedom offensive players are given with the ban on hand-checking. Even if Harden enjoys it.
Even role players like the Rockets’ Sam Dekker have thrived on quicker pace. He played at the University of Wisconsin for Bo Ryan, who turned games into quagmires, emphasizing that the team with the bestquality possessions, not the most, would prevail.
Dekker’s teams won, but they averaged between 66 and 74 points a game. He has eagerly adjusted to the NBA.
“When I got drafted here, I was really excited,” Dekker said. “I’m running, I’m sprinting, I’m catching lobs, I’m hitting open 3s. That’s a basketball player’s dream.”
If that is the glee of a second-year bench player, imagine the liberation Harden and Westbrook are embracing.
Pace is more desirable now, but it has not become a definitive predictor for wins. The Suns and Brooklyn Nets lead in pace and are two of the worst teams this season. The Utah Jazz have the seventh-best record in the Western Conference and the slowest pace.
Too slow for D’Antoni
Even D’Antoni’s teams have not made the case so clear that a fast pace is quintessential. His admired 2004-05 Suns averaged the most points and led the league with a pace of 96 possessions a game. More than a decade of evolution later, this season, the Rockets have that beat at 97, but they rank 14th in pace. Westbrook’s Thunder averages 99 and ranks fifth.
D’Antoni extolled Westbrook’s output leading into the Friday matchup against Harden, who he also marveled at for his “ridiculous” numbers. Everything he is seeing suggests the game needs to keep moving in this direction. He looks back on his celebrated Phoenix team and thinks that even its league-leading pace was not fast enough.
“Because we didn’t win a championship,” D’Antoni said flatly. “We want to win one here. If we can get it up a little bit, that will help.”