By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Since the launch of Basketball Champions League, there has been notable evolution in team pace and the overall offensive tendency of teams, as more and more teams of different levels participate in the competition. Statathlon presents this evolution and as the stats prove, sometimes you have to play in a lower tempo in order to score more.
Team Pace has been one of the most intriguing topics of discussion in basketball over the last years. The famous “7 seconds or less”offense designed by Mike D’ Antoni for 00’s Phoenix Suns, literally changed the game. Then, it was Golden State Warriors of Steve Kerr that gave another meaning to fast pace. Soon, this trend was also introduced to Europe. On the one hand, there are teams such as Real Madrid or CSKA Moscow that push the tempo and score a lot and on the other hand, there are teams like Olympiacos Piraeus or even Fenerbahce Istanbul which keep their pace at a lower level.
On this research, the evolution of team pace over the last few years is analyzed. The case study used will be the Basketball Champions League since its first edition in 2016. Moreover, two additional parameters will be featured, Offensive Rating and Effective Field Goal Percentage, to determine whether teams playing at a faster tempo score more or not.
2016 – 17 Season
Results from 2016 – 17 season reveal that the lower the team pace, the higher both the Offensive Rating and the EFG% (each dot represents a team). In other words, teams having fewer possessions per game scored more points per 100 possessions and with a better overall percentage. In fact, there is a quite good example that could confirm this claim. Iberostar Tenerife, the first ever BCL champion, had the 6th lowest Pace amongst all 40 Regular Season teams but was ranked 5th overall in Offensive Rating and EFG%. Pearson’s Correlation Coefficients also indicate that there was a stronger correlation between average possessions per game and Offensive Rating than EFG%.
2017 – 18 Season
However, the situation next year was reversed. A positive correlation between Team Pace and Offensive Rating is found (+0.13) as well as a slightly positive between Team Pace and Effective Field Goal Percentage (+0.05). As illustrated in the relevant graph, teams usually scored more when they played at a faster tempo. It is quite interesting to point out a remarkable difference that occurred: Unlike Iberostar Tenerife, this time the champion (AEK Athens) had the 6th highest Team Pace.
2018 – 19 Season
So far this year, it seems that we are back to 2016 – 17 after a yearly “break”. Once more, both Correlation Coefficients have a negative value which underlines the fact that lower tempo leads to higher offensive efficiency. Out of the top – 5 clubs in Team Pace per game, only one is above league average in Offensive Rating and two in EFG%. At this point, a special mention must also be made of Promitheas Patras performance. The Greek side has the lowest Team Pace in League, averaging approximately 67.5 possessions per game. However, this has given it the chance to have the best Offensive Rating and the 2nd best EFG%.
Evolution Throughout the Years
Finally, the following graph demonstrates how those 3 metrics have changed over the last three seasons. Team Pace has been taking a hit, from 71.5 possessions three years ago to 72.5 this year. Only 3 teams (Montakit Fuenlabrada, Lietkabelis and Promitheas Patras) are averaging less than 70 possessions per game.
As a result, there has been a massive increase in both Offensive Rating and EFG%. From 103.5 and 50.2% in 2016 – 17 season, these numbers rose to 108.9 and 52% last year. This would make sense probably if the reader takes into consideration that the current and the previous edition of the competition feature much stronger teams than the first one. The increasing trend hasn’t stopped, although the rate now is smaller.
Conclusion
To sum up, the current research showed that in Basketball Champions League higher pace not only does not necessarily lead to more efficient offense, but in many cases causes the exact opposite result. However, teams now score more points per possession and with better EFG% than a few years ago.
Only teams which made it at least to the regular season were included in the research.
Last data update: 8/3/2019
Team Pace: Average team possessions per game. Offensive Rating: Teams scored per 100 team possessions. Effective Field Goal Percentage: A statistic that adjusts for the fact that a 3-point field goal is worth one more point than a 2-point field goal.
The Pearson Correlation Coefficient determines if 2 variables have a positive correlation (when the one increases, the other increases too – positive value) or negative (when the one increases, the other decreases – negative value). It varies between -1 and +1.