Economists Got Game

Yes, the title is a tribute to Ray Allen.  Ray had 9 years with my two favorite franchises, the Sonics (R.I.P.) and the Celtics.   Having played many years of pickup basketball, I have heard many players say “feed him the rock, he has the hot hand.”  As a player, I usually just yell back “get open.”  As an economist, I have read several studies of the phenomenon known as the “hot hand” and I would like to share two of those today.

First, in 1985 Thomas Gilovich, Robert Vallone, and Amos Tversky published a paper in Cognitive Psychology title “The Hot Hand in Basketball: On the Misperception of Random Sequences.”  I know the title might be a little boring for many readers, but I think the results are fairly interesting.  We will see if the nickname Microwave is appropriate for Vinnie Johnson (he appears to be pretty “on fire” in this picture).

First, the researchers issued a survey to basketball fans and found that 91% believed that a player had a better chance of making a shot after making two or three previous shots than a player who had just missed two or three shots.  In this sense, 91% of the fans supported the “hot hand” theory.  This is not surprising because it just seems like something that has to be true.  I know when I make a few shots in a row, I feel a lot more confident and my memory tells me that I make more shots than I miss, so this just has to be true, right?  Unfortunately the numbers do not back it up.  The researchers used data from the Philadelphia 76ers (this was the 1980-1981 team that went 62-20, so no 76ers jokes here) to show that players who had made their last two or three shots did not stand a better chance of making the next shot when compared to players who had missed their previous two or three shots.  Thus, there was no statistical evidence of a “hot hand.”

Many of you might be thinking that the results had something to do with defenses making adjustments or other plausible explanations for this lack of evidence.  So, I give you another study.  This time, in 2003, Jonathan Koehler and Caryn Conley wrote an article in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology titled “The ‘Hot Hand’ Myth in Professional Basketball.”  In this study, the researchers looked at the NBA’s Long Distance Shootouts from 1994 – 1997 (in a shootout, there would be no defensive adjustments).  The researchers found that contestants who had just made two or three in a row made 57.3% in the next shot while contestants who had missed two or three in a row made 57.5% in the next shot.  Once again, researchers found no evidence to support the theory of the “hot hand.”

So, next time you are in a game of pickup and someone yells at you to “feed the hot hand,” simply reply with “the theory of the hot hand has no empirical evidence.”  Or just say “shut your face and play defense from time to time.”