Back in 1985 Amos Tversky, an Israeli behavioural psychologist, published one of the earliest papers that could be categorised as ‘Advanced Analytics’, where he proved that shots should be categorised as individual events. This went against the assumed knowledge that players and teams should ride the ‘hot hand’ and that if a player had made a few shots in a row, he was more likely to make his next shot. Though widely accepted now at the time Tversky’s theory was rubbished with legendary Celtics coach and GM Red Auerbach commenting “Who is this guy? So he makes a study. I couldn’t care less” and Bob Knight saying “There are so many variables involved in shooting the basketball that a paper like this really doesn’t mean anything.” This led Tversky to assert “I’ve been in a thousand arguments over this topic. I’ve won them all and I’ve convinced no one.”

While writing the article published yesterday on shot allocation I thought a lot about just how teams can achieve an efficient shot allocation, having read long-time Tversky collaborator Daniel Kahnemann’s book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” (which is definitely well worth a read) shortly before I begun thinking about the “hot hand” fallacy. The issue at hand with the “hot hand” fallacy is that humans are intuitively bad statisticians, and we will instinctively ascribe some kind of causality when we see something that we believe is a statistical anomaly (like a player hitting three or four shots in a row), which is actually within a random distribution. As with this being an issue with instinct, shot allocations are too guided by instinct, players will take the shots that they believe are best for the team at the spur of the moment, it is the job of coaches to guide the instinct of players. But, given that the shot allocations are imperfect, how can we find a short cut to efficiency?

This is where the riding the hot hand comes in, while it provides no benefit in terms of boosting FG%, it can provide us with a nifty little heuristic short cut to a better shot allocation. As players with higher field goal percentages will be more likely to have a chain of made field goals than a low field goal percentage riding the hot hand will mean that shots are allocated towards those who make them. Riding the hot hand has an undeserved reputation, I feel this is because it is typically confused with a “heat check” shot where we see a player hoist up a normally ill advised pull up jump shot early in the shot clock. Riding the hot hand needn’t mean ill advised shots, it should just mean that offences look to find players that have been making their shots, whether it be a big man finishing a pick and roll at the rim, finding a shooter in the corner or even in some rare occasions a pull up jump shot early in the shot clock.

Allocating shots in this way is essentially advocating a meritocracy, which would also lead to a change in attitude for players, if the most efficient players are given the most shots then the least efficient players will be forced to reconsider their shot selection if they wish to maintain a place in the rotation.

A further benefit to this is that it solves the issue of how to deal with turnovers that was presented at the end of yesterdays article, if players begin to instinctively look for the player that has made the longest chain of shots then they will also take into account turnovers that occur in an attempt to get the ball to that player, and will look elsewhere if it is turnovers begin to occur if the ball is forced into that player. It will also automatically adjust to the situations in the game, if a player has a favourable or unfavourable match up then they will either be more successful or less successful and will be get more or less looks, or if a player is playing through injury or illness it will automatically adjust downwards too.

While it would not provide a perfect allocation, that can only come through players have complete perfect knowledge of the percentages from each spot on the floor relative to the defence, which is impossible. Riding the hot hand can provide a very quick short cut as it will necessarily favour the most efficient shots and the players that take those shots. For a long time the term ‘hot hand’ has been a bogey term used by those who don’t fully understand statistics, it’s time for this to change and for it to be considered as a legitimate strategy to boost efficiency.