IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jospec/v22y2021i6p639-677.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Hot Shots: An Analysis of the “Hot Hand†in NBA Field Goal and Free Throw Shooting

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Lantis
  • Erik Nesson

Abstract

We investigate the hot hand using detailed data on free throws and field goals attempts for 12 NBA seasons. We find a small hot hand for free throws, which more than doubles for longer streaks of made free throws. Both offenses and defenses respond to field goals, but a made field goal does not change the probability that a player makes his next field goal attempt, and longer streaks of made field goals reduce the probability that a player makes his next field goal attempt. Finally, a made field goal reduces the team’s expected points on their next shot.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Lantis & Erik Nesson, 2021. "Hot Shots: An Analysis of the “Hot Hand†in NBA Field Goal and Free Throw Shooting," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 22(6), pages 639-677, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jospec:v:22:y:2021:i:6:p:639-677
    DOI: 10.1177/15270025211006889
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15270025211006889
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/15270025211006889?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brett Green & Jeffrey Zwiebel, 2018. "The Hot-Hand Fallacy: Cognitive Mistakes or Equilibrium Adjustments? Evidence from Major League Baseball," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(11), pages 5315-5348, November.
    2. Emily Oster, 2019. "Unobservable Selection and Coefficient Stability: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(2), pages 187-204, April.
    3. Joshua B. Miller & Adam Sanjurjo, 2015. "Is it a Fallacy to Believe in the Hot Hand in the NBA Three-Point Contest?," Working Papers 548, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    4. Chen, Daniel L. & Moskowitz, Tobias J. & Shue, Kelly, 2016. "Decision-Making Under the Gambler’s Fallacy: Evidence From Asylum Courts, Loan Officers, and Baseball Umpires," IAST Working Papers 16-43, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    5. Christoph Bühren & Stefan Krabel, 2015. "Individual Performance after Success and Failure - A Natural Experiment," MAGKS Papers on Economics 201505, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    6. Jeremy Arkes, 2013. "Misses in “Hot Hand†Research," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 14(4), pages 401-410, August.
    7. Peter Csapo & Markus Raab, 2014. "“Hand down, Man down.” Analysis of Defensive Adjustments in Response to the Hot Hand in Basketball Using Novel Defense Metrics," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(12), pages 1-25, December.
    8. Gur Yaari & Shmuel Eisenmann, 2011. "The Hot (Invisible?) Hand: Can Time Sequence Patterns of Success/Failure in Sports Be Modeled as Repeated Random Independent Trials?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(10), pages 1-10, October.
    9. Daniel L. Chen & Tobias J. Moskowitz & Kelly Shue, 2016. "Decision Making Under the Gambler’s Fallacy: Evidence from Asylum Judges, Loan Officers, and Baseball Umpires," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(3), pages 1181-1242.
    10. Daniel F. Stone, 2012. "Measurement Error and the Hot Hand," The American Statistician, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 66(1), pages 61-66, February.
    11. Joshua B. Miller & Adam Sanjurjo, 2015. "Surprised by the Gambler’s and Hot Hand Fallacies? A Truth in the Law of Small Numbers," Working Papers 552, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    12. Arkes Jeremy, 2010. "Revisiting the Hot Hand Theory with Free Throw Data in a Multivariate Framework," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 6(1), pages 1-12, January.
    13. Dorsey-Palmateer R. & Smith G., 2004. "Bowlers Hot Hands," The American Statistician, American Statistical Association, vol. 58, pages 38-45, February.
    14. Miller, Joshua Benjamin & Sanjurjo, Adam, 2018. "Surprised by the Hot Hand Fallacy? A Truth in the Law of Small Numbers," OSF Preprints sv9x2, Center for Open Science.
    15. Joshua B. Miller & Adam Sanjurjo, 2014. "A Cold Shower for the Hot Hand Fallacy," Working Papers 518, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    16. Brown, William O & Sauer, Raymond D, 1993. "Does the Basketball Market Believe in the Hot Hand? Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1377-1386, December.
    17. Nerlove, Marc, 1971. "Further Evidence on the Estimation of Dynamic Economic Relations from a Time Series of Cross Sections," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 39(2), pages 359-382, March.
    18. Gil Aharoni & Oded H. Sarig, 2012. "Hot hands and equilibrium," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(18), pages 2309-2320, June.
    19. Nickell, Stephen J, 1981. "Biases in Dynamic Models with Fixed Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(6), pages 1417-1426, November.
    20. Joshua B. Miller & Adam Sanjurjo, 2018. "Surprised by the Hot Hand Fallacy? A Truth in the Law of Small Numbers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(6), pages 2019-2047, November.
    21. Klaassen F. J G M & Magnus J. R., 2001. "Are Points in Tennis Independent and Identically Distributed? Evidence From a Dynamic Binary Panel Data Model," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 96, pages 500-509, June.
    22. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Robert Lantis & Erik Nesson, 2024. "The Hot Hand in the NBA 3-Point Contest: The Importance of Location, Location, Location," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 25(3), pages 283-321, April.
    2. Wen‐Jhan Jane, 2023. "Hot hand or choking under pressure – Evidence from professional basketball," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 76(2), pages 223-254, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Robert Lantis & Erik Nesson, 2024. "The Hot Hand in the NBA 3-Point Contest: The Importance of Location, Location, Location," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 25(3), pages 283-321, April.
    2. Robert M. Lantis & Erik T. Nesson, 2019. "Hot Shots: An Analysis of the ‘Hot Hand’ in NBA Field Goal and Free Throw Shooting," NBER Working Papers 26510, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Brett Green & Jeffrey Zwiebel, 2018. "The Hot-Hand Fallacy: Cognitive Mistakes or Equilibrium Adjustments? Evidence from Major League Baseball," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(11), pages 5315-5348, November.
    4. Joshua B. Miller & Adam Sanjurjo, 2018. "Surprised by the Hot Hand Fallacy? A Truth in the Law of Small Numbers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(6), pages 2019-2047, November.
    5. Cotton, Christopher S. & McIntyre, Frank & Nordstrom, Ardyn & Price, Joseph, 2019. "Correcting for bias in hot hand analysis: An application to youth golf," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 75(PB).
    6. Miller, Joshua Benjamin & Sanjurjo, Adam, 2018. "A Cold Shower for the Hot Hand Fallacy: Robust Evidence that Belief in the Hot Hand is Justified," OSF Preprints pj79r, Center for Open Science.
    7. Miller, Joshua B. & Sanjurjo, Adam, 2021. "Is it a fallacy to believe in the hot hand in the NBA three-point contest?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    8. Joshua B. Miller & Adam Sanjurjo, 2015. "Is it a Fallacy to Believe in the Hot Hand in the NBA Three-Point Contest?," Working Papers 548, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    9. Evans, Andrew E. & Crosby, Paul, 2021. "Does a cool head beat a hot hand? Evidence from professional golf," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 272-284.
    10. Joshua B. Miller & Adam Sanjurjo, 2019. "Surprised by the Hot Hand Fallacy? A Truth in the Law of Small Numbers," Papers 1902.01265, arXiv.org.
    11. Marius Ötting & Roland Langrock & Christian Deutscher & Vianey Leos‐Barajas, 2020. "The hot hand in professional darts," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 183(2), pages 565-580, February.
    12. Robert Wrathall & Rod Falvey & Gulasekaran Rajaguru, 2020. "Do (Australian) jockeys have hot hands?," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 45(2), pages 223-239, May.
    13. Daniel J. Benjamin, 2018. "Errors in Probabilistic Reasoning and Judgment Biases," NBER Working Papers 25200, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Wen‐Jhan Jane, 2023. "Hot hand or choking under pressure – Evidence from professional basketball," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 76(2), pages 223-254, May.
    15. Jeremy M. Losak & Andrew P. Weinbach & Rodney J. Paul, 2023. "Behavioral Biases in Daily Fantasy Baseball: The Case of the Hot Hand," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 24(3), pages 374-401, April.
    16. Salaghe, Florina & Sundali, James & Nichols, Mark W. & Guerrero, Federico, 2020. "An empirical investigation of wagering behavior in a large sample of slot machine gamblers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 369-388.
    17. Ala Avoyan & Robizon Khubulashvili & Giorgi Mekerishvili, 2020. "Call It a Day: History Dependent Stopping Behavior," CESifo Working Paper Series 8603, CESifo.
    18. Daniel F. Stone & Jeremy Arkes, 2016. "Reference Points, Prospect Theory, and Momentum on the PGA Tour," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 17(5), pages 453-482, June.
    19. Cueva, Carlos, 2020. "Animal Spirits in the Beautiful Game. Testing social pressure in professional football during the COVID-19 lockdown," OSF Preprints hczkj, Center for Open Science.
    20. Joshua B. Miller & Adam Sanjurjo, 2014. "A Cold Shower for the Hot Hand Fallacy," Working Papers 518, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    hot hand; basketball; NBA;
    All these keywords.

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jospec:v:22:y:2021:i:6:p:639-677. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.