“Hand down, Man down.” Analysis of Defensive Adjustments in Response to the Hot Hand in Basketball Using Novel Defense Metrics

Abstract

The hot-hand phenomenon, according to which a player’s performance is significantly elevated during certain phases relative to the expected performance based on the player’s base rate, has left many researchers and fans in basketball puzzled: The vast majority of players, coaches and fans believe in its existence but statistical evidence supporting this belief has been scarce. It has frequently been argued that the hot hand in basketball is unobservable because of strategic adjustments and defensive interference of the opposing team. We use a dataset with novel metrics, such as the number of defenders and the defensive intensity for each shot attempt, which enable us to directly measure defensive pressure. First, we examine how the shooting percentage of NBA players changes relative to the attributes of each metric. We find that it is of lesser importance by how many defenders a player is guarded but that defensive intensity, e.g., whether a defender raises his hand when his opponent shoots, has a larger impact on shot difficulty. Second, we explore how the underlying metrics and shooting accuracy change as a function of streak length. Our results indicate that defensive pressure and shot difficulty increase (decrease) during hot (cold) streaks, so that defenders seem to behave according to the hot-hand belief and try to force hot players into more difficult shots. However, we find that shooting percentages of presumably hot players do not increase and that shooting performance is not related to streakiness, so that the defenders’ hot-hand behavior cannot be considered ecologically rational. Therefore, we are unable to find evidence in favor of the hot-hand effect even when accounting for defensive pressure.

Effect of Heart rate on Basketball Three-Point Shot Accuracy

“…In terms of study limitations, it should be considered with caution that results were obtained under very controlled conditions, while real game-play takes place in a sometimes chaotic setting characterized by opponents of varied levels, numerous score differences, opposing fans' behavior, etc.). Basketball statistics have provided indications about other confounding factors as well, such as shooters shooting better when defended and shooters scoring several points over a stretch of time without any special reason 7 (i.e., the “hot-hand phenomenon or fallacy”, “streaky” shooters, and/or the “Matthew effect”; Gilovich et al, 1985 ; Wardrop, 1995 ; Koehler and Conley, 2003 ; Arkes, 2010 ; Csapo and Raab, 2014 ; Csapo et al, 2015 ). Another study limitation, that could prompt further studies, is that we did not considered heart rate effect on 3S% in different playing positions and/nor elite adult players (we chose to investigate a typical whole youth team).…”

Basketball Shot Types and Shot Success in Different Levels of Competitive Basketball

“…The few properties with respect to the basketball shot that have been explicitly analysed and supported by empirical research are that more successful teams, on average, have fewer three-point attempts and a higher shooting percentage [ 2 , 5 , 9 ] and that guards attempt more shots from long range than centres, especially three-point shots [ 10 , 11 ]. A very often researched related topic is the hot hand phenomenon (see [ 13 ] and references therein).…”

“…In recent years, there have been substantial advancements in automated player and ball tracking. Technology implemented in the NBA, is capable of (semi-)automated recognition of such technical elements as shot type and defensive spacing, and these data are already being used in research [ 13 , 14 ]. For other technical aspects and basketball competitions other than the NBA, researchers currently have no choice but to manually collect the data by visually inspecting games.…”

Performance Streaks in Elite Beach Volleyball - Does Failure in One Sideout Affect Attacking in the Next?

“…By analyzing pairs of sideouts, the question is only whether failure in one sideout affected the next sideout. A different option would be to use streaks of more than one unsuccessful sideout (e.g., three, as proposed by Csapo and Raab, 2014). One argument for longer streaks might be that the effect of failure in beach volleyball is larger or even occurs after many misses in a row.…”

“…Results provide an inhomogeneous picture. One group of studies finds evidence against the existence of hot hand (e.g., Gilovich et al., 1985; Vergin, 2000; Bocskocsky et al., 2014; Csapo and Raab, 2014), whereas a second group maintains the contrary (e.g., Raab et al., 2012; Bocskocsky et al., 2014; Miller and Sanjurjo, 2014; Stins et al., 2018). Meta-studies provide comprehensive overviews of results and associated methodological issues and mostly agree that evidence for the hot-hand phenomena is controversial and fairly limited (Bar-Eli et al., 2006; Avugos et al., 2013; Iso-Ahola and Dotson, 2014).…”