SALT LAKE CITY — A faster pace isn't better.

That's a weird thing to write in 2016, the age of the Golden State Warriors, now over a decade removed from the "Seven Seconds or Less" Suns. But over the past couple of years, there's been a lot of research into the pace issue, and more and more people are coming to the conclusion that it doesn't seem to have a large effect on the success or failure of a team.

From a Jazz perspective, it's kind of reassuring, though. The Jazz had the slowest pace in the league last season for the second straight year. Ironically, that's after twoseasons of me writing "The Jazz might be picking up the pace!" articles that are now kind of silly to read. The Jazz are probably going to be one of the slowest teams in the league again this year, and that's fine. Maybe even good.

Let's break it down by doing some mythbusting on pace.

Myth 1: Faster teams have better offenses

I think most people believe this thanks to the Golden State Warriors, which is both the fastest team in the league and has the most efficient offense. But looking beyond it, some of the league's best teams offensively are some of its slowest: Cleveland, San Antonio and Toronto were all top-5 offensive teams last year with bottom-5 paces. Overall, the correlation is between ORtg and Pace is nearly nothing: -.05. It was even a bigger negative correlation two years ago.

That's a surprising result, because it is true that shots taken earlier in the shot clock are much more efficient. But for whatever reason, it doesn't seem to have much of an effect on overall team ORtg. Maybe the fastest non-Warriors teams are forcing shots that they shouldn't be taking (I'm looking at you, Washington). Or maybe the slowest teams are still good enough at taking advantage of the transition opportunities that it ends up not mattering.

The Jazz last year, for example, were an incredibly frustrating team to watch in transition. It seemed like over and over, they couldn't quickly take advantage of opportunities in which other teams would normally score quickly. And the data bears that out: the Jazz were the slowest team after getting a defensive rebound, and second slowest after forcing a turnover. But even after taking forever to shoot, they ended up being really efficient: 10th in the league after rebounds, 13th in the league after forcing turnovers. Huh?

Here's my take: I think getting early shots is a great opportunity for more efficient offense. I think pace and seconds per possession stats fail to account for a lot of the differences in how teams operate.

Myth 2: Faster teams have better defenses

Okay, I don't know how many people believe this one, but there's an argument that maybe teams that force a lot of turnovers will have a faster pace because of shorter possessions. That's not true, and there's a negative correlation between a team's pace and defensive efficiency: the slower you allow your opponent to be on offense, the better. That negative correlation is bigger in magnitude than anything on offense, by the way.

One interesting quirk of this is that the above doesn't seem to matter much after a made basket, in other words, when every defense has time to set. But it does matter after turnovers. Teams that forced teams to take longer after their own turnovers did much better in the points they allowed off of those turnovers. (There was a negative 0.52 correlation between those two categories last year, in case you're curious.)

Myth 3: Faster teams win more games

This is just a simple sum of the last two, but it's worth mentioning: there's no positive correlation between wins and pace. Last year, there was a small negative correlation. Some fast teams win, like the Warriors. Some slow teams win, like the Cavs and the Spurs. Some fast teams lose, like the Kings. Some slow teams lose, like the Bucks. Teams are all over the map here.

Myth 4: Pace is contagious

You'll hear a phrase like this a lot from broadcasters: "Right now, the Jazz are getting caught up in the hectic Warriors' pace. They need to slow down and play their game to be successful."

Well, it turns out that teams have very little affect on the pace at which the other plays. Mike Beuoy looked at 12,000 NBA games to determine the correlation between the two teams' pace of play, and found that it was just 0.046, in other words, nearly nothing.

It turns out, when the Jazz play the Warriors, each team runs their offense like they always do. From the above study:

"For example, this past season, the Utah Jazz were the slowest offensive team in the league, averaging 16.3 seconds per possession. The Golden State Warriors were the fastest, with just 13.5 seconds per possession. These two teams met four times in the regular season. In those four games, the Jazz averaged 18.0, 16.3, 16.6, and 16.6 seconds per offensive possession, and the Warriors averaged 14.2, 13.7, 13.4 and 13.7 seconds. Each team was seemingly immune to the contrasting tempo of its opponent."

Not only don't teams get caught up in each other's pace, but defense doesn't have much of an effect on how quickly possessions go. Beuoy estimates only 7.2 percent of how quickly a team plays is explained by team defense.

Myth 5: Having pace in your team's favor helps them win

That's another one you'll hear a lot from broadcasters in the "Keys to the Game" segment: That if a game goes at one team's pace, that team will have a much better chance at winning.

Researcher Mohin Banker looked at this, and found that tailoring a game's pace had no statistically significant impact on the game's outcome. As we saw above, the two teams don't have much of an effect on each other's pace anyway. Here's the money quote from the study:

"When a team controls the pace, that team is playing their preferred style of basketball, and we would expect that to be beneficial. However, we find that in reality, there is no discernable advantage — when it comes to winning games, what matters is simply which team is more talented, not how fast the game is."

That's a good way to wrap up a lot of this research: The impact of pace seems to pale in comparison to other important factors. The skill level of the players and getting good shots seems to make a lot more of a difference than how many possessions a team is able to accrue.

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