It’s early.

Every year at this time, I have to continually remind people not to overreact to what happens in the first couple games of the season. That both the Sixers and Hornets are 3–0 does not mean they’re destined to meet in the NBA Finals. That Raymond Felton outscored LeBron James on Saturday doesn’t mean the kid has the makings of an elite superstar. And just because Stephon Marbury put together two poor games this weekend — not an encouraging sign — he’s not doomed to a year of bricks and turnovers.

The problem is that people’s focus in the early going is often too narrow. Instead of looking at the specifics of a single game, it’s better to step back and examine some of the issues that might define the whole season. The trend toward smaller lineups, for one will have big ramifications for every team.

Then there are individual players whose problems clearly aren’t temporary. Phoenix’s Boris Diaw, for instance, is obviously not in basketball shape (in the spirit of seeing the glass half-full, let’s just say he’s “bulked up”).That’s going to be an issue for the Suns all season, not just in their 1–3 start.

On the other hand, there are problems that aren’t really problems once you consider context. For instance, Rockets fans are bothered byTracy McGrady’s early-season struggles, but check out his career stats and you’ll notice a pattern here. The guy struggles every November, so seeing him get out of the gate so slowly this year shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Similarly, the strong starts by Portland’s Zach Randolph and Seattle’s Ray Allen shouldn’t come as a big shock to those in the know — we’ve seen this movie before.

Another shift is in the officiating. The so-called no-tolerance policy officials have adopted when it comes to handing out technical fouls is not technically zero-tolerance, but it does mean players have less leeway to continue to grouse or to show up an official.

This change affected the Knicks in Atlanta on Friday: Nate Robinson thought he made a clean block on Speedy Claxton and jumped up and down in disbelief when the whistle blew. Tweet. Technical foul. While it’s possible he would have earned a T last year, it was a guaranteed tech in the new environment. Later, Isiah Thomas was so upset when Claxton pulled a similar move and didn’t get whistled, he kicked the scorer’s table and got himself T’d up.

The concern among coaches, however, is that veterans have been given far more leeway than young players and “problem” players. Take the Clippers-Nuggets game on Thursday, I watched as Sam Cassell spent virtually the entire game having a conversation with the refs — just like he always does — but the second Carmelo Anthony mouthed off, he was rung up.

Concerns about inconsistency aside, this is a huge improvement in the product for the league. While some of the league’s serial complainers have panned the move, the fact is the league had turned into one of those awful playground games where every call is followed by five minutes of complaining and posturing before the game resumes. Watching this year’s games, it was striking how little time the players have spent barking at officials.

While the tech rule affects mostly individual players, some of the more interesting early trends are at the team level. The Memphis Grizzlies, for instance, told us all fall how this year would be different; they were going to run more and play half-court less. They even went so far as to claim Mike Fratello was getting a bad rap as a slow-paced coach from his days with Cleveland.

Well, a week into the season, guess who’s playing at the league’s slowest pace? That’s right, the Memphis Grizzlies. Old habits die hard, my friends. Lots of coaches come into training camp insisting their team will run and press more and play an exciting style, but that isn’t meant for internal consumption. Don’t look for the Memphis Snails to start running and gunning any time soon. In fact, they may play even slower once post threat Pau Gasol returns.

Another team-level trend I pay close attention to are blowouts. Win-loss records can be hugely misleading at this time of year, but one-sided laughers are a much stronger indication of quality.

That’s why fans of last year’s finalists should be a bit concerned. Miami lost its opener by an astounding 42 points to Chicago, while Houston blitzed the Mavs by 31 over the weekend. This doesn’t necessarily doom the two clubs to a losing season — Miami lost a game by 36 last year and still won the title — but with the one exception, neither team lost a game by more than 24 points all of last season. For both to get hammered so badly in the season’s first week is troubling.

Finally, there are trends at the league-wide level. This has been perhaps the most important development of the season’s opening week, and the least observed one: The pace is much faster.I use a measure called “Pace Factor” to track how many possessions each team uses in a 48-minute game.

Last year, the average was 92.94; this year it’s all the way up to 95.83. The change may be more severe than it looks, because normally pace slowly increases as the year wears on. If that happens this year, we could be looking at an increase of 5% or more in game pace from a year ago.

That has important implications if it holds up. Obviously, teams like Denver and Phoenix that are more comfortable at a frenetic pace would appear to have an advantage. Additionally, the change appears to go hand in hand with the trend toward smaller lineups I mentioned earlier — if the game is faster, then there’s all the more reason to go smaller, which in turns make the game faster yet. It’s a vicious cycle.

So while the big lesson from the first week of the season, if there is one, is that the game appears to have quickened substantially, the biggest lesson remains that it’s still early. We all want to make sweeping proclamations based on the first game or two, but let’s not overreact just yet.

jhollinger@nysun.com