Sports
On Hot Hands and Shooting Streaks: Does "momentum" in basketball really exist?
Update (2018-04-15)
We recently discovered more evidence in support of the hot hand and also assailing the 1985 paper featured in this article due to lack of statistical power. See here for a digestible piece of analysis.
Basketball fans and players alike will attest to the ‘hot hand’ phenomenon, where the chances or a player making the shot are much higher following a series of successful shots than the chances following a miss. In this article, we feature a journal article that debunks this phenomenon as merely a figment of fans' imaginations.
The Hot Hand Hypothesis. Many basketball fans believe that there are periods during a game when a player has ‘hot hands’, but does it hold up under statistical rigor? (Photo: ryan_fung/Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
On the UAAP Season 76: DLSU vs UST Finals Game 1
The UST Growling Tigers stole the first round of the UAAP 76 Men’s Basketball Finals, at 73-72. (Photo: inboundpass/Flickr, CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0)
What a heartbreaking loss! After recovering from a 17-point deficit, the DLSU Green Archers struggled to make the winning basket in their finals matchup against the UST Growling Tigers. To come to terms with it, I’ve tried to analyze the outcome of the game the way I know best: through data. Let’s take a look at the numbers on the hard court.