The Sonics have hit the mark six times this season. Four times they've done it at home; twice on the road -- interestingly, both in overtime -- three of them have come in the midst of the current four game winning streak. They've gone over 100 points 11 times on the season (as a side note, this seems to be being mis-reported in the P-I message boards as 10 times, with the Sonics 10-0. My records (and my memory) think that they scored 102 in a loss at Portland, making the record 10-1); five of the 11 have come in the last six games, all wins.

What does this have to do with anything more interesting than whether I can reasonably expect to get free chalupas at a game?

The answer, in my mind, was provided to me by my fellow columnist SFS in his column last week. He discussed the Sonics winning -- and, more importantly to him, losing -- the right way. To him, this meant that the fans and the team were having fun. To me, having fun in basketball can mean only one thing; getting up and down the court (assuming I'm not the one who has to do the running with my poor endurance). I've been a little upset throughout the season that the Sonics haven't been running more. It's the style of play that brought the Sonics their greatest sustained success in the mid-'90's, and it seems well-suited to the current personnel. In the last four games, it's at least seemed like the Sonics have been running a lot more. The scoring numbers -- obviously, a running game means a faster pace, which means more shot attempts, which means more points -- seem to indicate that this hypothesis passes the reasonability test. I also don't think it's a coincidence that the Sonics have been more successful with this style.

But I wouldn't be SonicsKevin if I just went off this unvalidated observation, would I? The human mind often works in mysterious ways, and maybe I'm just so damn happy the Sonics are winning that I'm ignoring that nothing has really changed. And that's why statistical analysis was invented. Fortunately, this week I'm going to follow some good advice and try to keep it simple, at least statistically.

What we're really interested in measuring is the pace of the game. In my mind, that's done pretty simply by calculating the number of total possessions by each team in the game. Though that statistic isn't readily available, we can calculate the number of possessions with a fairly high degree of accuracy with the following formula:

fga+(.4*fta)+to

Quite obviously, a possesion can only end in three ways: A shot is taken, a pair of free throws are taken, or a turnover is committed. There are some who might get technical and wonder why we'd count more than one possession when two shots are taken on the same trip down court. To my mind, those are distinct possessions. Either way, it shouldn't have a significant difference. Why .4 as the multiplier for free throws instead of .5? Well, if every free throw shot were as part of two shots on a foul which was the only result of a possession, that would be the case. However, there are two other ways in which free throws can be shot; 'and ones' and technical fouls. These clearly seem to me to be double counting. Is .4 the correct multiplier? I don't know that I really care enough to bother trying to figure out. Another stat guy at BskBALL.com's message boards is charting Laker games and might be able to find a better figure. For now, .4 works.

There is, as always, a slight complication. If we were just to use total possessions in a game, we'd make overtime games look faster than they really were. Thus, we have to use possessions per minute, dividing by 48 for regular games, 53 for single overtime, and 58 for the one double overtime battle. Fairly simply (I think it took me about a half an hour) one can run down the possessions per minute for each Sonic game this season. As a baseline, I also took the total seasonal statistics and figured out the possessions per minute average. And, to provide one additional piece of information, I also calculated each team's efficiency in each game by dividing their score by their number of possessions.

To report a few interesting general observations, the average for the season for possesions per minute for the Sonics is 4.34, meaning they average a shot every 13.8 seconds. Their efficiency is 0.93, as is that of their opponents, giving one the idea that the Sonics are about even offensively and defensively. As an aside, the commonly held assumption in most NBA statistics is that teams average one point per possession. Assuming the Sonics aren't way on the low end -- and I seriously doubt they are -- this isn't true, though it's close enough. The Sonics best offensive performance was their last time out, the Saturday win over Detroit, when they averaged 1.23 points per possesion. Their worst was, unsurprisingly, the overtime loss to Miami the night after double-ot against Orlando, at .72 points per possession. Their best defensive game thus far has been .79 ppp in their win at Washington; the worst a tie, two 1.09 ppp marks in a 24-point loss at Minnesota and an 11-point loss at Portland. As another aside, the variance in offensive efficiency seems to be a lot less than that in defensive efficiency, as noted last week.

Interesting facts all, but not exactly what we're trying to figure out. Are the Sonics better off in a fast- paced game? To answer this question, I sorted the games from fastest pace to slowest. There have been 14 games in which the Sonics have played faster than average (the 4.34 p/min mark), two in which they were at 4.34, and 13 in which they have been below it.

For the first determination of success based on pace, I simply used these two categories and determined the winning percentage and efficiencies:

Pace	Results	Off. Eff.	Def. Eff.
Fast	8-6 (.571)	0.93	0.91
Neutral	2-0 (1.00)	1.04	0.88
Slow	4-9 (.307)	0.93	0.95

But, of course, I know you want more information, so I divided the games even further:

Pace	Results	Off. Eff.	Def. Eff.
>4.5	4-2 (.667)	0.95	0.88
4.49>x>4.4	2-1 (.667)	0.91	0.90
4.39>x>4.3	4-5 (.444)	0.93	0.97
4.29>x>4.2	2-5 (.286)	0.91	0.92
<4.2	2-2 (.500)	1.01	0.93

What can we conclude from this table? Quite clearly, the Sonics' performance does suffer as a game slows down. They are more likely to win a game played in the full court than one played in the half court. What I'd really be interested in being able to conclude with certainty is whether the offense or defense is primarily responible for this fact (or they are equally responsible). Looking at the numbers, it appears -- but we can hardly conclude -- that the defense suffers more than the offense.

Why? My unvalidated theory is this. The Sonics are about as good a half court team as a full court one on offense, thanks to the re-emergence of Vin Baker in the post, Gary Payton's individual brilliance, and good outside shooting. Their defense, on the other hand, suffers as the game slows down. A slower game means more time between shots for the opponent, which usually means that they are passing more. For the Sonics' defense, this means bending and eventually breaking with a great deal of rotation, and eventually allowing an open shot. The trap struggles against patient teams; anyone who remembers the Sonics' struggling more in the playoffs in the '90's -- when the game slows down -- ought intuitively know that.

To reach a nice conclusion, it's pretty clear to me from this data that the Sonics are better off opening up the offense and running. Even the two 'fast' losses came to Sacramento and New Jersey, generally considered (thanks to the Nets' addition of Jason Kidd) two of the best fast break teams in the NBA. As I've taken to saying, good things happen when you run.

That said, is a faster pace really responsible for the Sonics' success of late, as I began this column postulating? It doesn't look like it. Orlando was a very fast game, followed by an average one against Sacramento, a slightly above-average one against Golden State, and then (shock!) the slowest game of the season last Saturday against Detroit. It's hard to imagine, having attended that game and not left my seat through all 48 minutes, that it was really one of the slowest games of the year. However, I'm afraid this is, as I mentioned earlier, a case of the result playing tricks with the mind. Because the Sonics had their highest regulation point total of the season, I assumed they must have been playing at a fast pace. Now, looking at the numbers, I see conclusively that they simply were very efficient with those possessions they did have.