How Pace Can Help Us Evaluate Prospects Around the World

The 2025 NBA Draft Class features highly rated prospects from college, Australia, Europe, and even China. As basketball’s global growth continues, how do we compare prospects playing in different leagues, and weigh them evenly?

Nolan Traore /

Evaluating prospects for the NBA Draft is both easy and incredibly challenging. That dichotomy may sound incorrect, but it’s true. Evaluating prospects is easy in the sense that it is something of a crapshoot. We can pour over data, film analysis, specific play breakdowns, and player's entire careers all to find out halfway through their first contract that all they care about is their second contract and Call of Duty, which to be fair, there is nothing wrong with that -- everyone has a right to secure their bag. Players can also get hurt, their ability to shoot threes magically disappears, or it turns out their exceptional skill does not make up for their athletic disadvantages. 

Evaluating prospects is incredibly challenging because we do have access to a tremendous amount of data and film to hopefully catch player traits that are indicative of potential significant drawbacks in the NBA. But all the data and information we have exists within the contexts of that player's environment -- their team, coach, and even the league they’re playing in. As basketball has grown into a global sport, pathways to the NBA have diversified. Players still come from college for the most part like they always have - and those colleges bring in more international prospects than ever before - but they also come from Europe, Australia, China, and even other systems in America like Overtime Elite. 

How do we compare players from all these different environments? Are stats and relative success equal across all of them? 

The short answer to that question is no, and the longer answer will explain that while some competitions are tougher than others -- they are all tough. Good stats and good film, regardless of where you play, usually make you a good prospect if you’re playing at a high level somewhere. 

One of the key things to look at when evaluating a prospect's environment is to assess the league’s pace as a whole. Pace is how many possessions a team has in a typical game. A higher pace means more possessions, more shots, and more opportunities. That is all it means. A higher pace does not guarantee inflated stats or that a prospect's gaudy numbers should be doubted. Evaluated, yes, but not doubted. It takes talent to capitalize on increased pace and opportunities just like it does for prospects who play on slower teams and in slower environments. 

For starters, the NBA is still the fastest league in the world. The average league pace this season is 99.95, and teams average about 2.08 possessions per minute. The players are the best in the world and thus, the game moves accordingly. Good decisions are made more frequently, and that makes the game move quicker. Second is the Australian NBL, with a league-average pace of 79.63. Across a 40-minute game, that’s high: 1.99 possessions per minute. That’s not far off the NBA’s mark and to some, it is indicative of a lower-quality of defense. More on this later. 

EuroLeague -- Europe’s highest level of club basketball -- has an average pace of 72.01 and 1.8 possessions per minute. EuroLeague and European basketball at large are known for playing more half-court basketball, pursuing fewer transition opportunities, and enjoying a more patient game. Every four years at the Summer Olympics, we all bear witness to this especially as teams try to beat the United States. Slowing down the pace of the game is often the most important step in that challenge. 

College is tougher to evaluate because of how many conferences there are, and it doesn’t quite have something like the EuroLeague, where the bulk of Europe’s best teams face each other for 30-plus games. In the Big 12 conference, the average pace this season is 70.01 (1.75 possessions per minute) and in the ACC, 69.6 or 1.74 possessions per minute. This makes these the slowest of the bunch. 

Does that mean college stats are more impressive? NBL stats less so? Is it more impressive to put up big numbers in college than in EuroLeague?

Kind of, kind of, and not really.

Pace is just one metric, and it’s helpful to contextualize what a prospect is doing. Yes, a college player scoring 12 points per game could be more impressive than an NBL Next Star scoring 15 per game. But not always, comparing individual opportunities matters too. The NBL is also still a better league -- the players are professionals, not amateurs -- so even with more opportunities, filling the stat sheet still has its challenges. 

There are ways to counter-pace inflation when evaluating players, too. Looking at accuracy metrics over volume stats, adjusting stats for per-minute and per-possession comparisons, and more. Essentially, pace is a good measure of environment, and environment can help shed light on the context of a player's performance. This matters more and more as players enter the draft from different leagues around the world. As always, other insights still matter.

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