Phoenix Suns Analytics: Fastest Teams of the Last 25 Years

By Scott Hanna-Riggs | Apr 24, 2016

Oct 30, 2015; Phoenix, AZ, USA; Two-time NBA Most Valuable Player Steve Nash during his induction into the Suns Ring of Honor speech during half time at Talking Stick Resort Arena. Mandatory Credit: Jennifer Stewart-USA TODAY Sports /

Looking back on the 2015-16 Phoenix Suns, there are few noteworthy achievements.

Devin Booker’s scoring as a teenager was a great achievement. Mirza Teletovic set the NBA record for the most 3 pointers off the bench in a single season.

There is one additional achievement that made me take a second look: this was the fastest Suns team since 1992-93, according to Pace from basketball-reference.com.

Immediately this struck me as wrong.

The Steve Nash lead teams must have been faster than this team. They were, and I’ll show you why. First, a couple definitions:

Pace: Estimate of the number of possessions a team has per 48 minutes played.

Possession: This is a shockingly complex formula. Basketball-Reference, regarding possessions, says, “(available since the 1973-74 season in the NBA); the formula for teams is 0.5 * ((Tm FGA + 0.4 * Tm FTA – 1.07 * (Tm ORB / (Tm ORB + Opp DRB)) * (Tm FGA – Tm FG) + Tm TOV) + (Opp FGA + 0.4 * Opp FTA – 1.07 * (Opp ORB / (Opp ORB + Tm DRB)) * (Opp FGA – Opp FG) + Opp TOV))”

The metric Pace works well for calculating a team’s pace-of-play for a single season, but it fails for comparisons. A more appropriate metric would be Relative Pace.

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Relative Pace is simply the team’s pace minus the league-wide pace for that season.

A positive value represents how many more possessions per 48 minutes a team has than the average team; a negative value means the opposite.

While no metric is perfect, this number is more representative in my opinion.

If you simply define ‘fast’ as the number of possessions per 48 minutes, you’re missing the context. Fast is relative to the competition. Running a 6 minute mile is fast – unless you’re in the Olympics.

Looking at the league’s average pace makes sense for another reason: you still have to share the ball with your competition. If the opposition is running a slow, methodical offense, it will push your teams Pace down. The ability to generate more possessions than your opponent, that is what I truly consider fast.

Back to the main questions: is the 2015-16 team really the fastest Suns team since 1992-93? If not, what is the fastest Suns team of the past 25 seasons?

Let’s look at the current Suns, plus the two other contenders for fastest Suns teams.

Current Suns

Team: 2015-16 Pace: 98.5 (T-3rd in NBA, 3rd for Suns) Relative Pace: 2.7 (10th for Suns)

The high Pace is much less impressive after considering the NBA’s overall Pace. The 2015-16 season, with a Pace of 95.8, was the fastest since…1992-93.

Early 90’s Suns:

Fastest Team: 1992-93 Pace: 99.8 (4th in NBA, 1st for Suns) Relative Pace: 3.0 (7th for Suns)

These early 90’s Sun were fast, and the 1992-93 team was just barely the fastest of the bunch. This particular team added Charles Barkley, and included Dan Majerle, Tom Chambers, and Kevin Johnson (only for 49 games). Mark West started all 82 games, yet played far fewer minutes than super-subs Danny Ainge and Chambers.

While they led all Suns teams (over the past 25 years) in Pace, this is not the fastest Suns team. This was a fast team in a fast league. The league-wide Pace of 96.8 was the highest in the 25 year sample.

Steve Nash’s Suns

While Nash wasn’t the only driving force behind the Suns’ Seven Seconds or Less offense of the 2000’s, he was the engine. Those Suns teams relentlessly pushed the ball in a much slower era than both the early 1990’s Suns and the current Suns.

My suspicion, which I expect most Suns fans would share, was that these were the fastest Suns teams. Relative Pace agrees.

The top 5 Suns teams of the last 25 years, in terms of relative pace, are all Nash led teams, highlighted by the 2005-06 team.

Fastest Team: 2005-06 Pace: 95.8 (1st in NBA by 1.9, 10th for Suns) Relative Pace: 5.3 (1st for Suns)

This team was squeezing 5.3 extra possessions out of a game in a season that the league averaged just 90.5. This Pace rating was only the 10th highest for the Suns, but they had the best Relative Pace.

Relative to the rest of the NBA, the Steve Nash era teams from the 2004-05 season to the 2008-09 season were clearly the fastest Suns teams of the past 25 years, with the 2005-06 Suns taking the title as the fastest Suns team.