Here's an excellent article on why the whole fast/slow stuff means nothing:
SoundStage! Max dB - Fast Bass, Slow Bass - Myth vs. Fact (06/1999)
Both you and DoubleMidi are correct. From the point of view of physics, he is absolutely correct that a larger mass does require more force to accelerate. It is the case, however, that with a larger driver, there is more force available from the larger magnet and voice coil. Still, the larger force that's available may not compensate and a larger cone might take longer to get up to speed. The article to which you linked recounts a decades-old discussion. It points out correctly that, although some woofers take more time to get going,
it is of no practical consequence when one considers the frequencies they are are called upon to reproduce. The fact is that the low-pass nature of what they are fed is well within their time-constant for acceleration.
Translated to English: They can only move slowly but the low frequencies that they are asked to reproduce are well within their ability to follow them. If the highest rate at which you are capable of accelerating is 5 MPH/s^2 and I only ask you to accelerate at 2 MPH/s^2, then you will do just fine and you will do just as well as someone else who is capable of accelerating at 20 MPH/s^2.
So, what is this about "fast bass?" Well, consider what it takes for a bass note to be turned on and off quickly. From
Invalid Link Removed, we can think of the waveform as being composed of a series of frequencies from low to high. Turning on and off quickly requires that there be substantial high-frequency content! Yes, that's right. The waveform of a bass note turned on and off quickly contains substantial high-frequency content that arises from the "turning on and off quickly." The woofer in a typical multi-driver system does not produce those frequencies at the level that would be required. In a typical system, it is the mid-range and high-frequency drivers that do that. When all is designed correctly, the addition of all of the content from the woofer, mid-range, and tweeter combines in the correct time-alignment to produce a bass note that turns on and off quickly. What if we only looked at the woofer output for such a note? Well, you'd find that it would start slowly and would "ring" (continue to produce output) well after the "end" of the note. That ringing is cancelled by the combination of frequencies from the whole system. The woofer isn't ringing because it is inherently slow physically. It is ringing because that's the nature of the low-pass signal it's being fed.
What all of this means is that really "fast bass" will only occur via a system that is capable of reproducing accurately a fairly wide range of frequencies. Most of us use low-frequency cabs with what are, essentially, woofers. To the extent that they sound acceptable to us means that their higher-frequency output is "good enough" to capture the transient (on and off) response of the notes we play. Still, we all would do well to keep in mind that accurate reproduction of the sound of the instrument requires a system that can transduce frequencies above those "low notes."
But I do find that the more you know about the science behind it, the more you can make informed decisions, and more importantly, you can diagnose problems you might be having with your current setup. 
