These articles always bug me some what as they usually leave out the issue of technique. There are certainly times when I start heaving the ball at the ring with a lot less focus on technique and without taking the time to set my feet correctly. When I get my act into gear and concentrate on it I'd bet there is greater chance it's going in.<p>Now presumably this is less of an issue with professional players. I'm guessing LeBron James is a lot more consistent in his technique than I am but it seems like a major variable thats not really discussed.<p>The argument against the term "hot hand" seems to be against some silly naive notion that the stars align and you are on a shooting streak greater than some fixed probability would dictate.<p>But I've always thought of the term in the sense of the player shooting well i.e. the player has good technique and shot selection tonight and has raised their probability of the shot going in.<p>Which of course cannot be distinguished from anything else so I'm no doubt mostly wrong as well but it annoys me it isn't properly mentioned that I've seen.
These articles are fun to read for those hackers that are also basketball fans. That being said, I don't entirely agree with the author's reasoning. E.g., the author mentions reasons why a player is more likely to miss a shot after making one, but fails to go through a real analysis of "hotness".<p>Making one shot does not qualify a player as being hot by any definition that I've ever heard. So, what are the stats after making 2, 3, 4 shots? Does the likelihood of making the next shot rise after making several shots in a row? There are several other questions I would ask that would be more convincing to prove or disprove the effect of being hot.<p>Some of the comments below the article have interesting criticisms.
More details on the research here: <a href="http://web.me.com/sandy1729/sportsmetricians_consulting/Hot_Hand_files/HH_Draft_v04.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://web.me.com/sandy1729/sportsmetricians_consulting/Hot_...</a>
Hahahaha - I love the last remnants of the old Go.com network of Disney sites. (BTW, this is from Henry Abbott's TrueHoop blog, which was bought by ESPN. It's a very good read about debunking a commonly-held belief about basketball shooting with <i>facts</i>.)