Pace vs. efficiency

The intuition that fast teams score more holds only in raw points. Per 100 possessions the gap almost vanishes: teams above 78 possessions per 40 minutes post +0.6 ORtg over the rest of the sample, well inside the noise.

What does move the needle is transition frequency after defensive rebounds, not pace itself. Teams in the top quartile of early-offense share gain +2.1 ORtg.

Sample: 1,240 games, synthetic league data used for illustration.