I wonder what’s the impact of injuries. The fact that such an overwhelming part of the NBA teams allocate minutes similarly (and through the years) suggests the overall importance is negligible, but maybe the reason why Popovich is a single outlier is due to injuries (although the Spurs weren’t injury-free themselves…). I confess I’m a bit surprised by the fact that there aren’t more outliers, btw. In the games Dunleavy played, is it noticeable any variation in the Pacers rotation? What about Portland with Oden, the Magic with Nelson or the Lakers with Bynum? In the hypothesis that every team had perfect health during the season, would these numbers change? Most probably not, seeing how most teams follow a similar pattern no matter their quality, which indicates that the reason coaches don’t use longer rotations is not only about the relative quality of their players but due to tactical reasons, hopping to get better cohesiveness and team play with shorter rotations. Meaning that if you’re a NBA player looking for minutes, more important than being good is being better than your teammates.

Another thing, related to the pace: do teams that play at a faster pace do worse than their counterparts in close games? Intuitively, it makes some sense, not because of being tired but because they may be less equipped in terms of strategy and personnel to deal with the half-court game that is more common during the crunch time of close games. Maybe the importance of pace is overrated here as well.

“Also, it’s important to note that the 2009 Pacers, while third in the league, were not a historically fast team. Basketball-Reference.com lists the Pace Factors for NBA teams going back to 1974. In that sample, there have been 923 teams, and 415 (45%) of them were faster than Jim O’Brien’s 2009 Pacers. The problem is that only 10 of them have been since 2000.”

This is eye-opening, even considering that you can’t run much if your opponents don’t want you to. A propos, is that 10% gap typical of the league, assuming you have those numbers?