Hot Hands in Basketball

The selection bias for HH impinges on the topic of streaks in sports and has led to a much debated controversy in basketball concerning the phenomenon of “hot hands”. An oft-quoted paper by Gilovich, Vallone, and Tversky [8] debunks the idea that basketball players are more likely to score a second hit after a successful shot or, to put it another way, the first and second shots are independent Bernoulli trials. In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow [36], Nobel economist Kahneman comments (well before the Miller-Sanjurjo paper appeared) that “the hot hand is entirely in the eye of the beholders, who are too quick to perceive order and causality in randomness. The hot hand is a massive and widespread cognitive illusion.” Nevertheless, most spectators and players believe that streak shooting is a true phenomenon. The results of the Gilovich et al. study remained controversial until Miller and Sanjurjo shed new light on the question by showing that Gilovich et al. underestimated the phenomenon of “hot hands” or “being in the zone”.