But here's a secret that not even some of the nerdiest of stat nerds know: even Offensive Rating and Defensive Rating don't do a great job at "adjusting" for pace. Fast break possessions are inherently more efficient than half court possessions and a high number of those kinds of possessions will naturally skew the statistic upward. Basically, the offensive rating stat is still heavily influenced by pace and a rather poor proxy for how good a team's halfcourt offense is.

Meanwhile, on the other end, the Spurs danced around the Kings defense and got good looks on a fairly consistent basis. I don't have any stats to back this up, but from my observation when the Kings stayed home on their men, the defense was solid; when they fell into their zone, they were eviscerated. The Spurs shot 51.8% overall from the field and 42.1% from three, and with how open most of those shots were the Kings should count their lucky stars that it wasn't worse.

Not ideal, but again if the Spurs weren't uncharacteristically off from midrange it would have been much worse.

Random Observations

Tweet of the Night