Does The “Hot Hand” Exist in Basketball?
Photo Credit: Jim Davis/Globe Staff
There exists an age old debate among researchers and statisticians as to whether “hot” exists in sports, i.e., that a person who experiences a successful outcome has a greater chance of success in his next attempt. Tom Tango does a great job determining whether batters and pitchers go through hot and cold streaks in baseball in “The Book”, and Gilovich, Vallone and Tversky (1985) famously studied the phenomenon in basketball.
The idea of the “hot hand” fascinates me from both a cognitive and statistical perspective, and in this analysis, I am making my own go at determining whether the phenomenon exists in the NBA. Specifically, I'll examine the 41,000+ shots from the 2020-2021 season through the 2023-2024 season taken by the top ten high-volume shooters in the league. I define a shot as "hot" when the shooter successfully made his last field goal attempt within the last two minutes of the game, occurring in the same quarter as the current shot. For the analysis, I define shot efficiency as points per field goal attempt.
Table 1: Shot efficiency of the ten highest volume shooters from season 2020-2021 through season 2023-2024, separated into “hot” and not “hot”, along with the “hot” premium
From Table 1, we can see that the ten highest volume shooters are not more efficient shooters when they have made their last field goal attempt within the last two minutes. In fact, they are on average less efficient, reducing their efficiency by 0.04 points per attempt.
To put the shot efficiency in perspective: The top 50 volume shooters over the seasons studied have a standard deviation in shot efficiency of 0.0584. Hence, the 0.04 efficiency reduction represents a 0.685 standard deviation drop, which is highly significant over the sample size of shots taken.
Does this tell us that shooters are actually less accurate when they are hot? No - but it sheds light on the league’s perception of hot. Essentially, the findings indicate that the league believes in the notion of a "hot hand" for shooters who have recently scored, leading to tighter defensive coverage in subsequent possessions. In essence, the league seems to be overcorrecting for the potential of a hot hand.
