What is the best way to decide what offensive pace is best for a team? I tried all through my first season and would have thought slow would allow my starters to stay in the game longer which it did but we won more games with a fast paced where the starters only averaged about 25 minutes. Could anyone chime in as to how you decide the most effective method?

Where do you have the biggest advantage (or smallest disadvantage): Your starters vs. their starters, or your bench vs. their bench? That's usually how I decide, maybe adjusting for location of game, or based on who has the better team if there's a large difference in talent.

I *generally* go slow down when I think the other team is better than mine. 

I *generally* go uptempo when I think my team is better than the other team.

I'll occasionally look at starters/bench strength as jpmills does if I have time, but the above makes sense to me because if I have the better team, I want to increase the number of possessions, with the thinking that over the longer term/larger sample the better team wins more often. If I have the worse team, I want to "shorten" the game as much as possible, so that a couple lucky bounces/shots can help me perhaps steal a win.

I usually only go slow down if the other team is better than mine and if they run a Fastbreak/FCP or something is glaring about their team stamina-wise. 

One thing I always look at is their depth of rotation.  If they have 4 walkons, only run 8 deep, etc, I almost always go up-tempo.

Thank You for the responses realize I was not thinking correctly on this issue but all input makes sense now, thanks again.

I go uptempo when I'm better than the other team and slowdown when I'm worse... I'm so surprised that no one's said this yet, as it's the most common strategy.

If you're better, you want to increase the number of possessions in the game and therefore decrease the odds of a statistical underdog of winning.

Posted by asher413 on 12/16/2011 12:19:00 PM (view original):
One thing I always look at is their depth of rotation.  If they have 4 walkons, only run 8 deep, etc, I almost always go up-tempo.

what asher said.  Also, check the play-by-play of your opponents previous games.  Sometimes coaches will leave their starters in to very tired.  If I see any red that's almost an automatic uptempo for me.

If I think the teams are relatively in the same ballpark in terms of overall talent I tend to pick tempo based on whether I think I have a bigger advantage/smaller disadvantage amongst the starters or the bench.  If I feel like I'm a double digit favorite, though, I'm going to go uptempo almost all the time.  Double digit dog and it's always slowdown unless the other team has a painfully weak bench.

Ah.  You go, Glen Coco.  But everyone else - you're seriously way overthinking it!