He's so good, the section about statistical errors in scientific papers was so key to add imo. Stats don't lie, data doesn't lie. But the *conclusions* people draw from these stats can absolutely be incorrect, even if they're experts. Be careful of "scientists claim..." or "experts say" articles, go read the actual study itself where they separate data from conclusions.
Confidence is a real factor. If humans were machines without emotions than the hot hand would not exist, but we are biological machines with our emotions being one of the cogs in our biological machine.
Agreed. I played basketball in college (1 yr JUCO, 1 yr D1, 2 yrs D2), in my Freshman yr (JUCO) I scored 59 pts in a game (9/9 from 3, 10/10 from FT, and 23/27 for the game). At one point I remember feeling like I couldn't miss a shot...I shot a lazy 3 just to see if I could miss and It touched nothing but net. I don't think I missed the rest of the game. I had other games where before the game I knew I was going to score a lot. The confidence (combined with a ton of practice) can put you in a trance of sorts. Every high-level basketball player (especially shooters) talk about being in the zone. And, it's why coaches tell a struggling shooter to get too the line. Seeing the ball go in the basket matters.
@@Ash-ng4mn similarly, in my 13 threes night in college, I was chucking up the dumbest shots and they were all string music. You find yourself running back down court laughing and saying "that had no business going in."
I find it funny that people insist there’s no such thing as a hot hand when like…it’s just confidence. When you’re in a good headspace your muscles are more relaxed and it’s easier to be precise. There’s less indecision in your body It’s easier to see in basketball because shooting is very precise
This is why one of the major flaws of the original experiment was using non-pros. Confidence needs to be regulated through experience else it becomes recklessness. Pros need to know how to handle excitement as much as they do disappointment.
It's the opposite of the yips or the twisties, right? Heat feels* more an extension of flow state, which nobody seems to dispute the existence of. *my uninformed opinion
Fr anyone whos actually palyed and experienced heat can tell u each shot is not the same as the previous one. Heck if each shot is really the same as the next then ig warmups are pointless
There is definitely a hot hand phenomenon. Steph is the perfect example. He has a lot of bad games in a row..often…then has supremely good games in a row. He is..actually..very inconsistent…his hand just gets so hot..when he is hot that it makes his percentages high…but he is actually, very inconsistent. He does not come through, often. He was having bad games in the Olympics..until his hand got ‘hot’.
My coach used to always cite the studies about the hot hand not being real but nothing could sway me to believe it wasn't. No math can take away the confidence and looseness felt on the floor when in that zone. Just like no math could take away the tension when cold as ice. It may be person to person but we're not robots out there on the floor.
I feel like if scientists just stepped back and thought about it logically for a moment, they wouldn't even need to do studies. we're talking about human brains. if we see the ball go in, of course that has an effect on the following shots. we aren't robots or well trained monks hahah, feedback affects future behavior. maybe for some kids it's a negative effect, and for others it's a positive effect. but there's no doubt *some* people get a hot hand during games. it's foolish to think any other way imo, they should've looked for an error right when they got the results
@@_WeDontKnow_ As someone who got my degree in physics and played baseball through high school, that study never sat right with me either. However, there is value in doing these studies since we know human perception has a tendency to be very wrong, else we wouldn't even need statistics or data if we got everything right logically.
Adding onto this, it's hard to scientifically quantify said 'zone'. Being in the zone usually means your body mechanics, sequencing and timing is all working optimally and thinking is minimal. Data tracking doesn't and can't ever take into account these human physiological/psychosocial factors.
@@Dr_Trinh I'd like to think with enough data we could absolutely do it. With all of the tech we have today in terms of tracking things in sports, if there was more effort put towards monitoring players during games, maybe things like live video analysis of facial expressions and a few other things, we could figure out what exactly the indicators for being in the zone is. Doing a quick Google search to see if there was any research on physiological signs of being in the flow state, I found a pretty interesting paper, "How to Measure the Psychological “Flow”? A Neuroscience Perspective" which gives some signs of the flow state. I don't think we could reasonably measure that in athletes in real time yet, but it's fascinating. I wonder if there's any teams out there that have looked into the idea, maybe coaching certain routines with the objective of putting the players into the flow state as often as possible. Kind of off-topic, I was fascinated by the game after the Bills player, Damar Hamlin, collapsed on the field a season or two ago, and the next game the Bills returned two kickoffs for touchdowns with one of them being the opening kickoff. That was two of a total of 5 kickoffs returned for touchdowns for the entire season which is insane. If someone could somehow figure out how to coach players to have that kind of motivation for every game, they would be the best coach of all time. Mix something like that with figuring out how to coach flow state, and you could make any team in any league the best team of all time. It's so fascinating how much of sports deals with the mental aspect even at the highest level, and it seems that only recently has sports psychology really been taken seriously by professional teams.
I think the concept of "The Hot Hand" is closer to Reverse Yips, rather than an appreciable improvement in someone's chances, and more prevalent for players who are naturally talented at a certain task (like shooting) than just random people. Sports psychology is a big thing, and a player who thinks "ah shit, the next one isn't going in" will try harder to not miss, might tense up or think too much about the shooting form (rather than trusting the millions of practice shots he's had in his life), and in turn brick the shot because they simply talked themselves out of it. Conversely, a player who has the hot hand will most likely think about it less, feel more confident, and simply 'do' what they were always were able to do. The variables for missing lessen, whilst the chance to actually score doesn't truly go up. A big example is how some players completely crap the bed in game, whilst hitting a vast majority of their pre-game routine shots from the same position. So in essense, taking other variables out of it (defenders, injury, exhaustion, etc.), it's basically just a gigantic placebo/nocebo effect, where a player's mental state merely 'lowers' the chance to score away from their raw average. It connects to the earlier video about 'clutch', which ultimately doesn't exist, but rather is a player's own psychological ability to minimize potential self-inflicted nocebo. They're not inherently better in tense situations, but they're the least fazed by the internal noise.
Yeah, I was always skeptical of the simplification that the hot hand was just “a fallacy” because I know that personally, I am very capable of getting a cold hand when I get in my head and start thinking about mechanics or the result. So I always thought that at the very least not having a cold hand should qualify as a bit of hot hand for someone like me.
You may be correct, but these are both cases of "just so stories". If the data was opposite one could also say "the previous success leads the player to not take as much care, leading to increased chances of failure." More carefully analyzed data could potentially find some players are prone to "hot-hand", some are prone to "anti-hot-hand" and some have little bias either way. Figuring out ways to actually test the explanatory stories can be really difficult.
The Quality of this production is Insane fpr a channel this size. I don't even care about basketball but this vidoes are so interesting. Stucture, Storrytelling animations, pace just amazing.
In over 15 years of watching UA-cam, I've ever only subscribed to maybe 20 channels (only subscribed to 6 currently). This channel is good enough to make that cut.
The flow state you feel when you’re in the zone, truly cannot be duplicated. And the feeling is fucking incredible. Genuinely feel like the basket is a swimming pool, and you can just go with the flow and can’t miss.
Dude Michael - maybe only fellow UA-camrs will understand - but the INTENTION, CREATIVITY, and EDITING you bring to your videos is truly magic. You’ve got an insane talent and combo of combining data with incredible learning visuals… keep going man. Always look forward to your videos.
If you think deeply about the process of shooting a shot, it becomes obvious that hot streaks are a thing. The neurologic process of seeing the hoop, judging the distance and direction, and the amount of force needed, it's just such an incredibly precise and highly refined thing that experiences natural biological variation from day to day and minute to minute. Of course people get "on fire". The idea that each shot is a statistically independent event is ludicrous, and I'm surprised they're using that in their studies.
Great vid. The concept of a "hot hand" felt so normal to me that I had no idea it was even supposed to be a fallacy. It seems natural that succeeding at something and doing it again, and again, and again would build confidence and repeatability. Also for some reason the first thought that popped into my mind after finishing the video was "I wonder if this applies to other animals in some way".
I feel like “the hot hand” is just feeling more comfortable, not over thinking, relying on your training, and getting used to your shot motion and form and not getting “ cold”
this guy might be the most underrated UA-camr I've found recently. These videos are such high quality for a 100k subs account. Great research/insight, perfect sound, top notch presentation, excellent cinematography. 10/10 would watch again.
The goat has done it again. Great vid. I feel like I’ve called guys getting hot before tho. One night Tyrese Maxey made a few shots, I audibly said “he’s on a heater tonight,” and dude pulled from 38 and drained it. Flow state is real
same dude. A few months ago the Lakers were playing the Celtics and Lebron and AD were out, and while I was watching, after the first couple minutes Austin Reaves got himself going with a few layups, it seemed he was gonna go off, he ended with 32 and 7 threes. You could argue that’s what happened to Bronny last night. Got a few layups by being in the right spot and made a couple threes along the way, finishing with 12 points. The Hot Hand is real man.
A teacher of mine always says that you can model a problem into giving the solution that you hope for. This is especially a problem when talking about a “hot hand” which is as vague a term as it gets. It also feels like people who don’t play basketball are trying to solve basketball. I can confidently say I feel the hot hand heavily when I’m playing, but proving it statistically seems difficult. Great video as always.
Let me also add that I sometimes “ruin” my hot hand by acknowledging it. As if I realise i am doing well and add extra pressure to myself after a difficult made shot as if I have more to play for that just winning the game. I guess no analytics could predict something like that or after how many makes it happens
Let me also add that I sometimes “ruin” my hot hand by acknowledging it. As if I realise i am doing well and add extra pressure to myself after a difficult made shot as if I have more to play for that just winning the game. I guess no analytics could predict something like that or after how many makes it happens
Well this video hits home. I, too, was an '80s kid in the Spokane Valley who loved playing arcade games (and also read Gilovich on the hot hand in grad school). Love the channel Michael. Keep 'em coming.
Great video! I certainly was not expecting my university lecturer for microeconomics (Josh Miller) to so randomly appear in a UA-cam video, but I think it's awesome that I was taught economics by someone who made such a significant contribution to the concept of the Hot Hand Theory!
@@thebigmanufacturer Yes because he has the techinical skill to take that "i'm on fire feeling" and consistently put it in the rim. Technical skill matters as well here especially when dealing with the most skilled players in the world in the NBA. Confidence and feeling can be the difference between 10 points and a career night for them because most scorers already have the mechanics down pat they just need the emotional feeling ofo confidence, i'm in the zone, etc
@@k-ri2023 Drilling the same movement thousands (perhaps millions) of times makes him *more* likely to allow emotion to impact his performance (for better or for worse)? Factors such as confidence or doubt affect an expert *more* than they affect a novice?
@@thebigmanufacturer ues, because there are fewer variables affecting performance. An NBA player can do everything on a basketball court, so factors such as confidence and pressure have a mich greater impact on performance since lack of skill isnt really a thing
Your videos are incredible. It's obvious you put a lot of care into getting the stats and facts right first, and then presenting the story they tell. And the presentation is fantastic. The graphics, the narration, and, of course, the Legos. I have a video idea: Is Rasheed Wallace right? Is it true that "Ball Don't Lie"? How often do players miss the free throw(s) after a bad foul call? I don't know how you would define "bad foul call" objectively (possibly based on facial expressions?), and THEN watch hours of tape to find these instances and collect the data, even just for 25% of games in one season. But I think it's an interesting question
Conceptually, we can think about it this way. If the Yips exist, then the Hot Hand is it's natural symmetrical counterpart. We know the Yips exist. The burden of proof, then, is to show an asymmetry, to show that the Yips exist, but the Hot Hand doesn't. That hasn't happened yet.
The flaw of the original experiment was they presumed because the hot hand couldn't be detected in every player, then it must not exist. That's before even factoring in it wasn't pro players but random Cornell kids. But a hot hand like the yips only affects some players, moreover pros with a lot of experience can tell when they're in "the zone" and can regulate their emotions to not get too excited or reckless. That's what makes it different to the yips. For the yips you can be wrong in a million different ways, the space outside of the strike zone or outside of the hoop is infinite. But for the hot hand, being right takes a lot more focus.
The yips is a long-term extreme reduction in performance, mostly caused by some kind of performance anxiety. It also is uncommon. A team doesnt have multiple guys get the yips in a game, “avoid giving the ball to the cold hand” is not considered a good strategy.
I paused my video to write this. At 0:44 you say "Vinny Johnson was so embolic (?) of the hot hand..." I think that's a mash-up of "emblematic" and "symbolic." Clever, except that embolic refers to an embolism--something we all hope never to encounter.
Great video, loved the conclusion. Trust your intuition. Your brain is an amazing thing. You wouldn't be here without it. Anyone who has played a sport knows when he is "in the zone" as I would refer to it. Your focus is sharper, you have seemingly more energy, the game slows down, the ball feels right of the hand or foot or bat or club, etc. I've experienced it occasionally both competitively and, as I've aged, recreationally in a variety of sports. There is indeed a hot hand, and there's nothing like that feeling that you just can't miss.
the error the first study made was in how it considered statistical independence. they should've had more filters, like whether players start shooting or warm up first. cause although you may wanna say each make or miss is independent, the test subject is getting tired/warmed up. they are repeating a motion, getting in and or out of a rhythm, trying to respond to feedback (was my shot long, or short, how does the ball feel etc.).
You can feel this in video games too. Especially in fighting games, players who have good momentum, made the right moves and gave the right mix, they’re more likely to capitalize on that pressure, keeping the opponent on the back foot for as long as possible. Momentum isn’t just likelihood of success but it’s an integral feeling that we feel, compelling us to take more risks.
Great video! I've had some thoughts about difficulties in detecting the hot hand and some possible ideas for future methods: For game data: There are many factors causing noise, only some of which could be potentially controlled for. Individual variance in tendency to get hot/cold (mentioned in video), the real-time adjustment of defense to makes/misses (on average would moderate both effects), amount of real time passed between shot attempts, player's own shot selection (taking lower percentage "heat checks" after makes or waiting for a high percentage shot after misses). With the current play-by-play, position tracking, and other more granular data available, someone dedicated enough could try to tease out some of these confounders. For instance, only comparing shots that happen in the same quarter without time-outs in between, controlling for shot quality, and perhaps using the player's own expected percentage as a comparator (eg comparing open catch-and-shoot right corner threes with each other). In a controlled setting: I would like to see even more precise measurements beyond makes/misses. One could track good vs bad misses (or even distance from the basket center) to see if similar results tend to cluster. For a reasonably skilled player, you may have a 10-50% of missing a given shot after a make or miss; however, a bad miss (such as an air ball) would probably be significantly less likely after a good make than after a few misses. Motion capture technology could even detect the smoothness and consistency of a shooter's motion after makes and misses; I would expect the flow state of the hot hand to lend itself to smoothness while missing shots may cause a hitch or over-adjustment every once in a while. I agree with one of the conclusions that human intuition still likely overestimates hotness/coldness due to a bias for pattern-recognition. Most high-level athletes are proficient at keeping their mental state/arousal level within a range that produces relatively reliable results (otherwise they wouldn't be on the court taking those types of shots). Still, it would be interesting to find more definitive evidence of its existence and better quantify it.
specifically loved your closer, bc my intuitive reaction was like, “duh, of course momentum is a thing” but you’re absolutely right it’s also our responsibility to constantly challenge what we take for granted
I experienced “hot hand” when I was 17, in a friendly match with my local club. The feeling was like this: “The ball will go in, just flick the wrist and trust yourself”. I made 16/16FG. (11-2pt, 5-3pt) and 4/4 FT….41pts in total… And the funny part was, I had that feeling 3 days before that game and that “hot hand” disappeared after that game….
@@Yanel5795 It was wild to me…People talked about that moment weeks later. I got hard contested shots, but it didn’t matter at all, the ball would go in anyway. Then when I grew up and started to play higher level. And I realized that NBA shooters are really consistent without “hot hand”, I can’t imagine how good they will be if they got into “the zone/hot hand”.
I'm commenting so UA-cam can promote this to the front page. I don't get UA-cam sometimes, I didn't know you dropped a video and hit the bell and everything. Weird. Excellent video my brother. Continued success.
Throughout the video I kept thinking... What about in a real game wheres theres stakes on the line and a crowd screaming, and the many other variables that come into play. Basketball isn't just math. Great video!!
Got me wondering about how team strategies and individual choices affect the hot hand. For example, Luka and Klay take vastly different shots, Luka being an on-ball creator and Klay is an off-ball creator. I'd imagine everyone would pick a hot handed Mr. Thompson over anyone in history when it comes to shooting, but have we stopped for a moment to think about the shot difficulty? What about someone like Kobe who's known for hard shot making? Does the difficulty of shots affect our perceptions of the hot hand?
Great vid - as someone who believes in momentum, there’s only so much data you can collect on the feeling of confidence to keep taking shots and making them in the flow state. Also Neil Degrasse Tyson’s comment at the beginning (while probably out of context) implies that NBA players who are good at 3s are simply “more lucky” which is absolutely stupid.
Amazing video! I love the description of the subtle issue with the criteria used in the central study that led to the erroneous conclusions. Also, I find it funny that there are a lot of comments here talking as if the video’s conclusion is that “hot hand doesn’t exist” when like the 2nd half of it is explaining a counter point to the hot hand study, as well as how defining what “momentum” and “hot hand” even is turns out to be kinda hard lol
I'm not big into basketball, but I watch a good bit of football, and yes, momentum is a real thing. The difference is that you can't test in a perfect sterile environment, because games don't take place in a perfect sterile environment. Fatigue, changes in strategies, mixups in plays, player injuries, mental roadblocks, lazy victory laps, there are so many things that go into a momentum swing. Things that either can't or don't reverse easily. I strongly believe that whatever team is currently gaining ground is a better bet for victory. The mental health of a player and a team is really important in winning. I'm not a Patriots fan, but there's a reason you saw the Patriots dominate for decades. Part of it was their rampant cheating, but they basically practiced how to swing the momentum. They trained the mental game and the physical endurance to exhaust teams and come back in the second quarter against teams with better openings. I lost count of the number of games I saw them come from behind to win, and you could almost always tell when it was going to happen. Their ability to continue burning at maximum energy three hours into a game is incredible. If the other team doesn't have that level of energy, there's nothing they can do to watch the momentum slip away, and hope they have enough of a lead to win even when they're losing ground. If your team relied on a specific strategy to win in the first quarter, but your opponent figures out how to counter that strategy in the middle of a game, there's not much you can do but watch your lead slowly evaporate. I don't really need a scientific study to explain the mechanisms of momentum. With so many obvious explanations, it's difficult to understand why someone would doubt that momentum exists in general. The more challenging, and perhaps interesting problem, is trying to prove something that seems so self-evident, but only exists outside the world of sterile scientific experiments. Maybe for specific coin flipping competitions, you can prove momentum doesn't exist, but we don't watch coin flipping competitions. We watch competitions with strategy, innovation, and personalities. We watch sports because we know who the strong teams are and who the underdogs are. We keep score because we have a good guess about who will win. To me, it would be surprising that people were interested in sports if it was purely random chance. There's nothing interesting about purely random chance. I just can't imagine a world where people prefer to watch something that's perfectly random. Without the ability to demonstrate skill, it's not interesting to watch. One of the best skills is the ability to mindgame your opponent and mentally exhaust them. I still remember the 2021 chess world championship, with Magnus Carlsen against Ian Nepomniachtchi. That's one of the best examples of momentum I've seen. 5 straight draws in a row, followed by Magnus winning the longest recorded chess game at a world championship. That game broke records, and it broke Nepo. Whether it was simple mental exhaustion from playing a grueling 8 hour game, or he kept mindgaming himself from losing a drawn game, no one will ever know. But what we do know, is that Magnus went from drawing Nepo to crushing him multiple times with black, while Nepo was making blunders even IMs were wincing at. Nepo even looked bad in interviews, because he knew he was tilting. If tilt exists, surely you can bring your A game and experience positive momentum. I just can't see how intentionally forcing your opponent to tilt isn't the same as giving yourself positive momentum. This just goes back to the replication crisis in psychology. So many studies were done with highly intelligent students at a specific college, and they ended up being completely invalid. The real secret statistical bias is the bias for people creating studies to want their experiment to say something interesting. It's crazy how badly this was bungled, considering you can literally write a simple Python script to test that your analysis methodology would produce accurate results. This isn't the Standford prison experiment where you can only experiment on people. This was a statistical study where you can test perfect statistical models and see if you can reverse engineer the formula for a computer script that intentionally performs better the more shots it hits. I'm simply that someone could fail so hard at statistics, especially when validating your methodology is so easy that a college computer science student could write a test script to validate it.
great video. One thing that I think is interesting about this topic, is that there is a human element that you can't really quantify, unlike a coin flip. Especially when you're talking about guys at the highest level who have practiced every shot on the court 10,000 times, there's days where your body just feels better than normal and you're able to get into a flow state. I think that's partly why people can agree when a certain player is hot in the moment too, there's days where you can see the subtle difference in the way someone is moving and know they feel good.
2:42 Before watching any futher, this finding seems really interesting. When they break it down like this, it almost becomes a mental game. If you make 4 shots in a row, you know that. You might start to think youre getting "hot" or you already are. Taking you out of the moment. You dont just want to make your next shot, you want to make 5 in a row, suddenly you think about the shot for even a moment and the result is a miss. Repeated success, can potentially lead to "success yips". Or, you can go the complete opposite direction, and gain additional confidence in yourself, enter into a "flow state" and just keep making buckets. The fact it can go either way depending on an individual's psychology is exactly why momentum is magic to me. What leads to the players mental state, hows the game going, how they shot in the past when doing well/poor, what at combination of games played or shots taken in their life lead up to a moment where they mentally choked, or keep riding? Are you, or are you not, him? Magical.
Hey Michael, I think it would be super interesting to study players when they’re hot to see if their quite eye period increases. I also think athletes may become more focused or in the flow state when they start getting “hot” and this may be part of the cause for a hot streak. Finally, after watching the eye video I am skeptical if the quiet eye causes an elite athlete to make shots, or if it is a result of deeper controlled focus. I’d love to here your thoughts!
This is a super fascinating concept. Logically an extension on it for more research would be "how much does level of training impact the effect of momentum?" Do players get more consistent with reps or do they stay the same is an interesting thing to explore I just don't know how you would go about testing it.
For me as an individual i feel intuitively that the hot hand exists because in practice i will shoot 5 makes in a row followed by 5 misses super regularly. In my head i chock it up to when i make it my body more easily recalls how to replicate it afterwards, and once i miss i overcorrect and it takes a while to get back to proper form.
I know you do it for dramatic effect, but when you're whispering, if you could normalize the final volume levels so your music doesn't overpower your script, I think that'd be really great for your already awesome channel
dude the production on these videos are nuts & the content as always fascinating af, keep it up man, only a matter of time before i click on one of your videos and see the sub count > a couple mill
Lowkey believe it for my golf game as well. More confident I get with my club, more peace of mind I get. More peace of mind = less stress = better overall play
I studied this exactly as part of my own thesis. At the time though the report you’re referencing wasn’t published just yet but I do remember having been influenced by it. Paul Bessire graduated from the same graduate program as I did and had a pretty big influence on ncaa bracketology and algorithms being used to ingest and analyze scenarios which led to my own passion of consumer data and writing algorithms for Nielsen shopper data for a while. The issue back then and clearly still is today - the maths is correct but the framework is, and always has been wrong. This isn’t a bridge to Monty Hall. They kept saying that idk why. Hit hand relies on statistically more SKILLED SHOOTERS have the green light and EXPECTED to score a majority of their point from 3s or perimeter shots. I remember they used Hubert back then too. I debunked this pretty aggressively. Do you know what’s unique about the anecdote of Hubert and the first 3 balls? And all players. THEY START IN THE CORNERS lol. Me and Paul decided the ppl who go along with this didn’t hoop. The right corner 3 is the toughest statistically. Go do the maths… we did. The left corner 3 is bad but not quite as difficult. BUT again using 3 point data is pretty dumb for reasons i mentioned . Hot hand isn’t implicitly analyzing set feet or which hand they shoot with. To keep comment as short as I can let’s keep using the 3pt contest bc it proves how this framework does not apply. In Steph’s record 31 points, he opened with 2 missed then hit 6 straight. He then missed 3 balls at the top of the key. These are statistically by FAR the balls with the higher chance of going on. But where the research saying hot hand falls apart is when adjusting for the individual’s shooter ability to make 3s. Flipping a coin isn’t shooting a ball. And shooting an uncontested ball in rhythm no defense feet set isn’t appropriate for “hot hand” analysis. Not sure why ppl wouldn’t grasp that. Meaning, Steph made 31 of 40 balls. He had a hot hand? Really? In 2021 that same year in GAME, Steph shot 43%. HOWEVER he was statistically better in game when shooting uncontested 3s. At st the top of the key at home where the data was collected he was just shy of 80%. Meaning if you took 6 of his balls shot at home from the top of the key uncontested, he would have made 5. But in the 3pt contest he only made 3. But you’d still say he had a hot hand. That notion implies statistical significance above the norm. The research does not prove that. Different shooters have different level of skills that deviate from efficiency to shoot the ball ~286 inches from the rim. Hitting shots beyond 3 doesn’t mean the hand is hot. Not without a complete picture. Flipping a coin is chance. Finding range, getting touch on the ball and feel for the arena as far as background and depth all matters. A decade ago I also studied this at Rucker park. Outdoor yields FAR different results for the above reasons. Anyone who hoops will tell you it’s much harder to shoot outside. You wouldn’t use that though right? The type of player as well playing at Rucker isn’t a pure shooter often. It would be like the study that shows how elite snipers rarely miss after the first engagement in a series of volleys. No sht! They have range and a good feeling for environmental factors. A shooter mid game will exploit a defense or a players inability to get off a screen in the shooting side again them which impacts “hot hand”. There’s rarely some factor that isn’t observable . And hot hand erases these influences And it’s intellectually inappropriate. The exact same way there’s absolutely no such thing as clutch shooting. There’s no such thing as hot hand how it’s currently being described In this framework with this limited of data. A player like Steph will make many shots in a row but that’s expected given his % efficiency in different situations. Maybe he had a shorter defender. Klay Thompson for example is taller than Charles Barkley and Draymond Green and has a high release. The research published didn’t analyze these critical factor nor did it assess developing a standardized metric to account for the varying level of skill across participants to actually shoot 3s, uncontested 3s, and compare that against the area it was made. Another notable example is ever notice the NBAs longest shooters always “shoot from the lot”? I studied this and in fact each player has a spot. young and Lillard love right at the 45 degree angle or so - I suspect they prefer to line up their shooting elbow with the back corner of the backboard. Whereas Steph is lethal off center left or right beyond 25 feet. If you take 10 of his shots and notate he made 5 with the final 4 all being makes, you wouldn’t say he had a “hot hand”. If he shot and made those 5 from the top of the key butnkets pretend he got one more shot but this time it was from the corner on a new defender contested. Is it going in? The hot hand model implies higher than not chance but I bet you he doesn’t make that ball. You have to factor first and foremost are we talking the greatest shooter in history or a guy like KAT who shoots opportunistically? I dare you to say he has hot hand and I promise you I will systematically debunk that. The point is, hot hand in and of itself is not a uniform definition. And it’s not Monty hall with how they used it. Fundamentally yes but no that bridge isn’t as sturdy upon a great deal of scrutiny. While I normally love a contrarian bit of research, but it seems there was confirmation bias at times limiting how the framework was developed atleast in the published studies.
Another element is the fact that the quality of your play on any given day is reflected in whether you are in an up streak or a down streak. Since underlying skill fluctuates to some degree, dependent on sleep, mood, nutrition, warmup quality, etc, more of the makes are probably from shots taken on a good day, and there are more likely to be sequences of consecutive makes on the good day, and thus there is a larger sample size of the fourth shot after three consecutive makes from the good days vs the bad days. Likewise, there are more likely to negative streaks on bad days, and hence a fourth shot after three misses is more likely to be taken on a bad day.
Michael, I have been studying the phenomena you describe in your videos in great depth over the past few years, and through my learning I have been successful at both statistical prediction as well as identifying underlying structures and rules that govern probability. Would love to talk to ya if you’re ever interested.
It could also be explained with flow state. You stop thinking and just do. While after several misses you start thinking about what you have to do better and might loose confidence. Would be interesting to do a study about momentum in hockey. I feel like there are bigger momentum shifts even within a game than in any other sport. Anyways love your videos!
The thing which isn’t accounted for in this is increase self-confidence after making shots but also guarded more tight if you make more shots. I remember a time when we were down 15 in a game then suddenly I was able to make a few shots in a row and was able to get 14 points through 2’s. Then afterwards I started getting guarded tightly my shooting was still good but slightly less.
When I’m not sure I’ll make a shot I may or may not make a shot.. but when I know I’m going to make my next shot I make it. I can’t make myself know but the more I make the more I know…
I think confidence and self-belief (or conversely, self-doubt) play a big role in making heat “real”. I was the shooter specialist on my MS and HS teams, and yeah, when the ball goes in the hoop a couple times it starts to feel bigger… and sometimes it feels like there’s a lid on it. I went 1 for 9 once, I also went 6 for 7 once. 🤷♂️
I feel like everyone has experienced “the hot hand” at some point in their life. Everything slows down, you are living purely in the moment and everything is coming naturally. It’s like you are subconsciously playing/doing something. A lot of it is confidence. When something’s clicking, you don’t have to think about it, it just works. Vice versa for “the yips.” I love math/science, I love analytics, but I feel like mathematicians and scientists will often forget that people are not equations lol. The only way to understand or explain momentum is to experience it.
Only aperson who has never had a hot hand would question it like this, it's a subconscious reaction to a variety of circumstances in the flow of a game when you get in flow of the present moment.
Basketball is a skill game shooting a three pointer is a skill, confidence has a lot to do with hitting a three ball. My self if I hit 3 x three point shots my confidence is up and become more focused so my muscle memory + confidence + wanting the ball + my team mates look for the hot hand = a better chance in making the next shot I know right but it just goes that way Great to watch this and upload more please
I think the hit hand is definetely real but it’s mostly mental. After a few misses you start to overthink your form or hesitate on shots but when you make some you shoot with no hesitation and full confidence in your form
You definitely possess THE hot hand. Your videos have literally never missed.
Haha thank you, appreciate it!
@@michaelmackelvie for sure gets 100 rating for Hot Hand. +2.4% increased likelihood of swishing next video
He's so good, the section about statistical errors in scientific papers was so key to add imo.
Stats don't lie, data doesn't lie. But the *conclusions* people draw from these stats can absolutely be incorrect, even if they're experts.
Be careful of "scientists claim..." or "experts say" articles, go read the actual study itself where they separate data from conclusions.
he's truly the steph curry of jon bois's
Doesn’t he have a vid saying US talent is overrated?
Confidence is a real factor. If humans were machines without emotions than the hot hand would not exist, but we are biological machines with our emotions being one of the cogs in our biological machine.
Very well put
Emotions and fatigue
Agreed. I played basketball in college (1 yr JUCO, 1 yr D1, 2 yrs D2), in my Freshman yr (JUCO) I scored 59 pts in a game (9/9 from 3, 10/10 from FT, and 23/27 for the game). At one point I remember feeling like I couldn't miss a shot...I shot a lazy 3 just to see if I could miss and It touched nothing but net. I don't think I missed the rest of the game. I had other games where before the game I knew I was going to score a lot. The confidence (combined with a ton of practice) can put you in a trance of sorts. Every high-level basketball player (especially shooters) talk about being in the zone. And, it's why coaches tell a struggling shooter to get too the line. Seeing the ball go in the basket matters.
@@Ash-ng4mnonly happens to me in practice lol never ingame im so butt
@@Ash-ng4mn similarly, in my 13 threes night in college, I was chucking up the dumbest shots and they were all string music. You find yourself running back down court laughing and saying "that had no business going in."
Great video, as always. Thanks for the shout-out, it was great collaborating with you on the hot hand analytics!
Awesome! Great work, guys!
I find it funny that people insist there’s no such thing as a hot hand when like…it’s just confidence. When you’re in a good headspace your muscles are more relaxed and it’s easier to be precise. There’s less indecision in your body
It’s easier to see in basketball because shooting is very precise
This is why one of the major flaws of the original experiment was using non-pros. Confidence needs to be regulated through experience else it becomes recklessness. Pros need to know how to handle excitement as much as they do disappointment.
It's the opposite of the yips or the twisties, right? Heat feels* more an extension of flow state, which nobody seems to dispute the existence of.
*my uninformed opinion
Flow state = unconscious control = more smooth coordination.
Fr anyone whos actually palyed and experienced heat can tell u each shot is not the same as the previous one. Heck if each shot is really the same as the next then ig warmups are pointless
There is definitely a hot hand phenomenon. Steph is the perfect example. He has a lot of bad games in a row..often…then has supremely good games in a row. He is..actually..very inconsistent…his hand just gets so hot..when he is hot that it makes his percentages high…but he is actually, very inconsistent. He does not come through, often. He was having bad games in the Olympics..until his hand got ‘hot’.
My coach used to always cite the studies about the hot hand not being real but nothing could sway me to believe it wasn't. No math can take away the confidence and looseness felt on the floor when in that zone. Just like no math could take away the tension when cold as ice. It may be person to person but we're not robots out there on the floor.
I feel like if scientists just stepped back and thought about it logically for a moment, they wouldn't even need to do studies.
we're talking about human brains. if we see the ball go in, of course that has an effect on the following shots. we aren't robots or well trained monks hahah, feedback affects future behavior.
maybe for some kids it's a negative effect, and for others it's a positive effect. but there's no doubt *some* people get a hot hand during games. it's foolish to think any other way imo, they should've looked for an error right when they got the results
@@_WeDontKnow_ As someone who got my degree in physics and played baseball through high school, that study never sat right with me either. However, there is value in doing these studies since we know human perception has a tendency to be very wrong, else we wouldn't even need statistics or data if we got everything right logically.
@@_WeDontKnow_ Unlike a coin flip a shot isn't the same. You can modify your shot every time to allow for a percentage.
Adding onto this, it's hard to scientifically quantify said 'zone'. Being in the zone usually means your body mechanics, sequencing and timing is all working optimally and thinking is minimal. Data tracking doesn't and can't ever take into account these human physiological/psychosocial factors.
@@Dr_Trinh I'd like to think with enough data we could absolutely do it. With all of the tech we have today in terms of tracking things in sports, if there was more effort put towards monitoring players during games, maybe things like live video analysis of facial expressions and a few other things, we could figure out what exactly the indicators for being in the zone is. Doing a quick Google search to see if there was any research on physiological signs of being in the flow state, I found a pretty interesting paper, "How to Measure the Psychological “Flow”? A Neuroscience Perspective" which gives some signs of the flow state. I don't think we could reasonably measure that in athletes in real time yet, but it's fascinating. I wonder if there's any teams out there that have looked into the idea, maybe coaching certain routines with the objective of putting the players into the flow state as often as possible.
Kind of off-topic, I was fascinated by the game after the Bills player, Damar Hamlin, collapsed on the field a season or two ago, and the next game the Bills returned two kickoffs for touchdowns with one of them being the opening kickoff. That was two of a total of 5 kickoffs returned for touchdowns for the entire season which is insane. If someone could somehow figure out how to coach players to have that kind of motivation for every game, they would be the best coach of all time. Mix something like that with figuring out how to coach flow state, and you could make any team in any league the best team of all time. It's so fascinating how much of sports deals with the mental aspect even at the highest level, and it seems that only recently has sports psychology really been taken seriously by professional teams.
I think the concept of "The Hot Hand" is closer to Reverse Yips, rather than an appreciable improvement in someone's chances, and more prevalent for players who are naturally talented at a certain task (like shooting) than just random people. Sports psychology is a big thing, and a player who thinks "ah shit, the next one isn't going in" will try harder to not miss, might tense up or think too much about the shooting form (rather than trusting the millions of practice shots he's had in his life), and in turn brick the shot because they simply talked themselves out of it.
Conversely, a player who has the hot hand will most likely think about it less, feel more confident, and simply 'do' what they were always were able to do. The variables for missing lessen, whilst the chance to actually score doesn't truly go up. A big example is how some players completely crap the bed in game, whilst hitting a vast majority of their pre-game routine shots from the same position.
So in essense, taking other variables out of it (defenders, injury, exhaustion, etc.), it's basically just a gigantic placebo/nocebo effect, where a player's mental state merely 'lowers' the chance to score away from their raw average.
It connects to the earlier video about 'clutch', which ultimately doesn't exist, but rather is a player's own psychological ability to minimize potential self-inflicted nocebo. They're not inherently better in tense situations, but they're the least fazed by the internal noise.
Yeah, I was always skeptical of the simplification that the hot hand was just “a fallacy” because I know that personally, I am very capable of getting a cold hand when I get in my head and start thinking about mechanics or the result. So I always thought that at the very least not having a cold hand should qualify as a bit of hot hand for someone like me.
I think a players mental fortitude are precisely what they’re measuring, no?
@@azalliyes, the original comment seems to mistake "hot hand" as a literal hand phenomenon rather than a combination of mental and physical factors
Exactly!
You may be correct, but these are both cases of "just so stories". If the data was opposite one could also say "the previous success leads the player to not take as much care, leading to increased chances of failure." More carefully analyzed data could potentially find some players are prone to "hot-hand", some are prone to "anti-hot-hand" and some have little bias either way. Figuring out ways to actually test the explanatory stories can be really difficult.
The Quality of this production is Insane fpr a channel this size.
I don't even care about basketball but this vidoes are so interesting. Stucture, Storrytelling animations, pace just amazing.
In over 15 years of watching UA-cam, I've ever only subscribed to maybe 20 channels (only subscribed to 6 currently). This channel is good enough to make that cut.
gaaaaaay
@@frederickdelius1106 It's gay to compliment someone's work?
The flow state you feel when you’re in the zone, truly cannot be duplicated. And the feeling is fucking incredible. Genuinely feel like the basket is a swimming pool, and you can just go with the flow and can’t miss.
Thought the vsauce music was coming in at 0:09 for sure
You and a handful of other creators are my saving grace from the hellscape that is debate show sports content.
anyone who doesn't believe in the hot hand didn't watch the gold medal game.
Dude Michael - maybe only fellow UA-camrs will understand - but the INTENTION, CREATIVITY, and EDITING you bring to your videos is truly magic. You’ve got an insane talent and combo of combining data with incredible learning visuals… keep going man. Always look forward to your videos.
@@jayhoovy ahhh thanks Jay! Appreciate that my man
You are actively helping me get through my masters in data science/Statistics
If you think deeply about the process of shooting a shot, it becomes obvious that hot streaks are a thing. The neurologic process of seeing the hoop, judging the distance and direction, and the amount of force needed, it's just such an incredibly precise and highly refined thing that experiences natural biological variation from day to day and minute to minute. Of course people get "on fire". The idea that each shot is a statistically independent event is ludicrous, and I'm surprised they're using that in their studies.
Great vid. The concept of a "hot hand" felt so normal to me that I had no idea it was even supposed to be a fallacy. It seems natural that succeeding at something and doing it again, and again, and again would build confidence and repeatability.
Also for some reason the first thought that popped into my mind after finishing the video was "I wonder if this applies to other animals in some way".
I feel like “the hot hand” is just feeling more comfortable, not over thinking, relying on your training, and getting used to your shot motion and form and not getting “ cold”
this guy might be the most underrated UA-camr I've found recently. These videos are such high quality for a 100k subs account. Great research/insight, perfect sound, top notch presentation, excellent cinematography.
10/10 would watch again.
The goat has done it again. Great vid. I feel like I’ve called guys getting hot before tho. One night Tyrese Maxey made a few shots, I audibly said “he’s on a heater tonight,” and dude pulled from 38 and drained it. Flow state is real
same dude. A few months ago the Lakers were playing the Celtics and Lebron and AD were out, and while I was watching, after the first couple minutes Austin Reaves got himself going with a few layups, it seemed he was gonna go off, he ended with 32 and 7 threes.
You could argue that’s what happened to Bronny last night. Got a few layups by being in the right spot and made a couple threes along the way, finishing with 12 points. The Hot Hand is real man.
A teacher of mine always says that you can model a problem into giving the solution that you hope for. This is especially a problem when talking about a “hot hand” which is as vague a term as it gets.
It also feels like people who don’t play basketball are trying to solve basketball. I can confidently say I feel the hot hand heavily when I’m playing, but proving it statistically seems difficult.
Great video as always.
Let me also add that I sometimes “ruin” my hot hand by acknowledging it. As if I realise i am doing well and add extra pressure to myself after a difficult made shot as if I have more to play for that just winning the game. I guess no analytics could predict something like that or after how many makes it happens
Let me also add that I sometimes “ruin” my hot hand by acknowledging it. As if I realise i am doing well and add extra pressure to myself after a difficult made shot as if I have more to play for that just winning the game. I guess no analytics could predict something like that or after how many makes it happens
Well this video hits home. I, too, was an '80s kid in the Spokane Valley who loved playing arcade games (and also read Gilovich on the hot hand in grad school).
Love the channel Michael. Keep 'em coming.
Thank you! Savage House Pizza was where we would roll lol…burned down not sure what it’s called now.
Curry just proved in the olympic final that, HEAT in fact, is real. VERY REAL
Nope Kobe did
Great video! I certainly was not expecting my university lecturer for microeconomics (Josh Miller) to so randomly appear in a UA-cam video, but I think it's awesome that I was taught economics by someone who made such a significant contribution to the concept of the Hot Hand Theory!
Well, if they studied Cornell students instead of Larry Bird, that’s probably not a reliable premise to begin with.
You think Larry Bird is more likely to allow emotion to change his performance than college players?
@@thebigmanufactureryes
@@thebigmanufacturer Yes because he has the techinical skill to take that "i'm on fire feeling" and consistently put it in the rim. Technical skill matters as well here especially when dealing with the most skilled players in the world in the NBA. Confidence and feeling can be the difference between 10 points and a career night for them because most scorers already have the mechanics down pat they just need the emotional feeling ofo confidence, i'm in the zone, etc
@@k-ri2023 Drilling the same movement thousands (perhaps millions) of times makes him *more* likely to allow emotion to impact his performance (for better or for worse)? Factors such as confidence or doubt affect an expert *more* than they affect a novice?
@@thebigmanufacturer ues, because there are fewer variables affecting performance. An NBA player can do everything on a basketball court, so factors such as confidence and pressure have a mich greater impact on performance since lack of skill isnt really a thing
Your videos are incredible. It's obvious you put a lot of care into getting the stats and facts right first, and then presenting the story they tell. And the presentation is fantastic. The graphics, the narration, and, of course, the Legos.
I have a video idea: Is Rasheed Wallace right? Is it true that "Ball Don't Lie"? How often do players miss the free throw(s) after a bad foul call? I don't know how you would define "bad foul call" objectively (possibly based on facial expressions?), and THEN watch hours of tape to find these instances and collect the data, even just for 25% of games in one season. But I think it's an interesting question
Conceptually, we can think about it this way. If the Yips exist, then the Hot Hand is it's natural symmetrical counterpart. We know the Yips exist. The burden of proof, then, is to show an asymmetry, to show that the Yips exist, but the Hot Hand doesn't. That hasn't happened yet.
The flaw of the original experiment was they presumed because the hot hand couldn't be detected in every player, then it must not exist. That's before even factoring in it wasn't pro players but random Cornell kids. But a hot hand like the yips only affects some players, moreover pros with a lot of experience can tell when they're in "the zone" and can regulate their emotions to not get too excited or reckless. That's what makes it different to the yips. For the yips you can be wrong in a million different ways, the space outside of the strike zone or outside of the hoop is infinite. But for the hot hand, being right takes a lot more focus.
The yips is a long-term extreme reduction in performance, mostly caused by some kind of performance anxiety. It also is uncommon. A team doesnt have multiple guys get the yips in a game, “avoid giving the ball to the cold hand” is not considered a good strategy.
You dont need a fancy study, I just watched Steph overheat against France
I paused my video to write this. At 0:44 you say "Vinny Johnson was so embolic (?) of the hot hand..." I think that's a mash-up of "emblematic" and "symbolic." Clever, except that embolic refers to an embolism--something we all hope never to encounter.
🤓☝🏽
Great video, loved the conclusion. Trust your intuition. Your brain is an amazing thing. You wouldn't be here without it. Anyone who has played a sport knows when he is "in the zone" as I would refer to it. Your focus is sharper, you have seemingly more energy, the game slows down, the ball feels right of the hand or foot or bat or club, etc. I've experienced it occasionally both competitively and, as I've aged, recreationally in a variety of sports. There is indeed a hot hand, and there's nothing like that feeling that you just can't miss.
the error the first study made was in how it considered statistical independence. they should've had more filters, like whether players start shooting or warm up first. cause although you may wanna say each make or miss is independent, the test subject is getting tired/warmed up. they are repeating a motion, getting in and or out of a rhythm, trying to respond to feedback (was my shot long, or short, how does the ball feel etc.).
You can feel this in video games too.
Especially in fighting games, players who have good momentum, made the right moves and gave the right mix, they’re more likely to capitalize on that pressure, keeping the opponent on the back foot for as long as possible. Momentum isn’t just likelihood of success but it’s an integral feeling that we feel, compelling us to take more risks.
I get way too excited when a new video drops. Has to be the most engaging, entertaining, and well produced videos of any channel on YT.
Great video! I've had some thoughts about difficulties in detecting the hot hand and some possible ideas for future methods:
For game data: There are many factors causing noise, only some of which could be potentially controlled for. Individual variance in tendency to get hot/cold (mentioned in video), the real-time adjustment of defense to makes/misses (on average would moderate both effects), amount of real time passed between shot attempts, player's own shot selection (taking lower percentage "heat checks" after makes or waiting for a high percentage shot after misses). With the current play-by-play, position tracking, and other more granular data available, someone dedicated enough could try to tease out some of these confounders. For instance, only comparing shots that happen in the same quarter without time-outs in between, controlling for shot quality, and perhaps using the player's own expected percentage as a comparator (eg comparing open catch-and-shoot right corner threes with each other).
In a controlled setting: I would like to see even more precise measurements beyond makes/misses. One could track good vs bad misses (or even distance from the basket center) to see if similar results tend to cluster. For a reasonably skilled player, you may have a 10-50% of missing a given shot after a make or miss; however, a bad miss (such as an air ball) would probably be significantly less likely after a good make than after a few misses. Motion capture technology could even detect the smoothness and consistency of a shooter's motion after makes and misses; I would expect the flow state of the hot hand to lend itself to smoothness while missing shots may cause a hitch or over-adjustment every once in a while.
I agree with one of the conclusions that human intuition still likely overestimates hotness/coldness due to a bias for pattern-recognition. Most high-level athletes are proficient at keeping their mental state/arousal level within a range that produces relatively reliable results (otherwise they wouldn't be on the court taking those types of shots). Still, it would be interesting to find more definitive evidence of its existence and better quantify it.
I hope you find tremendous success and continued joy in making this channel. I love it. It's like last week tonight to me. It's must watch TV.
specifically loved your closer, bc my intuitive reaction was like, “duh, of course momentum is a thing” but you’re absolutely right it’s also our responsibility to constantly challenge what we take for granted
Superb effort Michael. I could geek out to videos like this all day!
I experienced “hot hand” when I was 17, in a friendly match with my local club.
The feeling was like this: “The ball will go in, just flick the wrist and trust yourself”.
I made 16/16FG. (11-2pt, 5-3pt) and 4/4 FT….41pts in total…
And the funny part was, I had that feeling 3 days before that game and that “hot hand” disappeared after that game….
Yes, thats also called being in the zone or a zone. Its true, ive experienced it
@@Yanel5795 It was wild to me…People talked about that moment weeks later.
I got hard contested shots, but it didn’t matter at all, the ball would go in anyway.
Then when I grew up and started to play higher level. And I realized that NBA shooters are really consistent without “hot hand”, I can’t imagine how good they will be if they got into “the zone/hot hand”.
How about the mental aspect of the hot hand. A player that is confident more likely to improve performance
Yeah this entire video is bs
Here after Curry's Hot Hand at Olympic Final. Great video!
Steph Curry done went and proved this in one quarter of that Olympic final. Also, fantastic video, just found your channel and loving it
I'm commenting so UA-cam can promote this to the front page.
I don't get UA-cam sometimes, I didn't know you dropped a video and hit the bell and everything. Weird. Excellent video my brother. Continued success.
Professor Miller was my microeconomics professor at Uni! What a surprise to see him here!
Throughout the video I kept thinking... What about in a real game wheres theres stakes on the line and a crowd screaming, and the many other variables that come into play.
Basketball isn't just math.
Great video!!
your videos are great. one rando's opinion: take it easy with the broadcasting voice, it sounds awkward to me. ur natural voice is great
That stunt double shooting the flaming ball looks exactly like you ;)!!
Your videos are amazing, so lucky to be ur first here ;)
Stats, sports, editing, voice, you have it all!
Got me wondering about how team strategies and individual choices affect the hot hand. For example, Luka and Klay take vastly different shots, Luka being an on-ball creator and Klay is an off-ball creator. I'd imagine everyone would pick a hot handed Mr. Thompson over anyone in history when it comes to shooting, but have we stopped for a moment to think about the shot difficulty? What about someone like Kobe who's known for hard shot making? Does the difficulty of shots affect our perceptions of the hot hand?
Michael MacKelvie Video Release Day >>> Christmas Morning as a Kid
Great vid - as someone who believes in momentum, there’s only so much data you can collect on the feeling of confidence to keep taking shots and making them in the flow state.
Also Neil Degrasse Tyson’s comment at the beginning (while probably out of context) implies that NBA players who are good at 3s are simply “more lucky” which is absolutely stupid.
No -- it does not imply any such thing.
was at the klay 37 pt quarter game, I’ll never believe the hot hand doesn’t exist
Watching that game as a Kings fan was so demoralizing… I can’t imagine having gone to see that game in person
Amazing video! I love the description of the subtle issue with the criteria used in the central study that led to the erroneous conclusions.
Also, I find it funny that there are a lot of comments here talking as if the video’s conclusion is that “hot hand doesn’t exist” when like the 2nd half of it is explaining a counter point to the hot hand study, as well as how defining what “momentum” and “hot hand” even is turns out to be kinda hard lol
maybe the true hot hand is the friends we made along the way
my god this channel is still so absurdly underrated. like the production quality here is INSANE. best sports channel right now for sure.
Hands Down
So glad i found this channel, you've got a great thing going here! Love the content and the storytelling, keep em coming please ❤
Oh how I wish that Tim Hardaway Jr qualified for the graph at 19:10
Dang, I knew nothing about this, and I just sat and watched this entire video start to finish. That was great.
I'm not big into basketball, but I watch a good bit of football, and yes, momentum is a real thing. The difference is that you can't test in a perfect sterile environment, because games don't take place in a perfect sterile environment. Fatigue, changes in strategies, mixups in plays, player injuries, mental roadblocks, lazy victory laps, there are so many things that go into a momentum swing. Things that either can't or don't reverse easily. I strongly believe that whatever team is currently gaining ground is a better bet for victory.
The mental health of a player and a team is really important in winning. I'm not a Patriots fan, but there's a reason you saw the Patriots dominate for decades. Part of it was their rampant cheating, but they basically practiced how to swing the momentum. They trained the mental game and the physical endurance to exhaust teams and come back in the second quarter against teams with better openings. I lost count of the number of games I saw them come from behind to win, and you could almost always tell when it was going to happen. Their ability to continue burning at maximum energy three hours into a game is incredible.
If the other team doesn't have that level of energy, there's nothing they can do to watch the momentum slip away, and hope they have enough of a lead to win even when they're losing ground. If your team relied on a specific strategy to win in the first quarter, but your opponent figures out how to counter that strategy in the middle of a game, there's not much you can do but watch your lead slowly evaporate. I don't really need a scientific study to explain the mechanisms of momentum. With so many obvious explanations, it's difficult to understand why someone would doubt that momentum exists in general.
The more challenging, and perhaps interesting problem, is trying to prove something that seems so self-evident, but only exists outside the world of sterile scientific experiments. Maybe for specific coin flipping competitions, you can prove momentum doesn't exist, but we don't watch coin flipping competitions. We watch competitions with strategy, innovation, and personalities. We watch sports because we know who the strong teams are and who the underdogs are. We keep score because we have a good guess about who will win. To me, it would be surprising that people were interested in sports if it was purely random chance. There's nothing interesting about purely random chance. I just can't imagine a world where people prefer to watch something that's perfectly random. Without the ability to demonstrate skill, it's not interesting to watch.
One of the best skills is the ability to mindgame your opponent and mentally exhaust them. I still remember the 2021 chess world championship, with Magnus Carlsen against Ian Nepomniachtchi. That's one of the best examples of momentum I've seen. 5 straight draws in a row, followed by Magnus winning the longest recorded chess game at a world championship. That game broke records, and it broke Nepo. Whether it was simple mental exhaustion from playing a grueling 8 hour game, or he kept mindgaming himself from losing a drawn game, no one will ever know. But what we do know, is that Magnus went from drawing Nepo to crushing him multiple times with black, while Nepo was making blunders even IMs were wincing at. Nepo even looked bad in interviews, because he knew he was tilting. If tilt exists, surely you can bring your A game and experience positive momentum. I just can't see how intentionally forcing your opponent to tilt isn't the same as giving yourself positive momentum.
This just goes back to the replication crisis in psychology. So many studies were done with highly intelligent students at a specific college, and they ended up being completely invalid. The real secret statistical bias is the bias for people creating studies to want their experiment to say something interesting. It's crazy how badly this was bungled, considering you can literally write a simple Python script to test that your analysis methodology would produce accurate results. This isn't the Standford prison experiment where you can only experiment on people. This was a statistical study where you can test perfect statistical models and see if you can reverse engineer the formula for a computer script that intentionally performs better the more shots it hits. I'm simply that someone could fail so hard at statistics, especially when validating your methodology is so easy that a college computer science student could write a test script to validate it.
great video. One thing that I think is interesting about this topic, is that there is a human element that you can't really quantify, unlike a coin flip. Especially when you're talking about guys at the highest level who have practiced every shot on the court 10,000 times, there's days where your body just feels better than normal and you're able to get into a flow state. I think that's partly why people can agree when a certain player is hot in the moment too, there's days where you can see the subtle difference in the way someone is moving and know they feel good.
Quickly become one of my favorite channels!
2:42 Before watching any futher, this finding seems really interesting. When they break it down like this, it almost becomes a mental game.
If you make 4 shots in a row, you know that. You might start to think youre getting "hot" or you already are. Taking you out of the moment. You dont just want to make your next shot, you want to make 5 in a row, suddenly you think about the shot for even a moment and the result is a miss. Repeated success, can potentially lead to "success yips".
Or, you can go the complete opposite direction, and gain additional confidence in yourself, enter into a "flow state" and just keep making buckets.
The fact it can go either way depending on an individual's psychology is exactly why momentum is magic to me. What leads to the players mental state, hows the game going, how they shot in the past when doing well/poor, what at combination of games played or shots taken in their life lead up to a moment where they mentally choked, or keep riding? Are you, or are you not, him? Magical.
I was almost expecting a "And as always, thanks for watching" at the end. That's how good this was.
Hey Michael, I think it would be super interesting to study players when they’re hot to see if their quite eye period increases. I also think athletes may become more focused or in the flow state when they start getting “hot” and this may be part of the cause for a hot streak. Finally, after watching the eye video I am skeptical if the quiet eye causes an elite athlete to make shots, or if it is a result of deeper controlled focus. I’d love to here your thoughts!
This is a super fascinating concept. Logically an extension on it for more research would be "how much does level of training impact the effect of momentum?" Do players get more consistent with reps or do they stay the same is an interesting thing to explore I just don't know how you would go about testing it.
For me as an individual i feel intuitively that the hot hand exists because in practice i will shoot 5 makes in a row followed by 5 misses super regularly. In my head i chock it up to when i make it my body more easily recalls how to replicate it afterwards, and once i miss i overcorrect and it takes a while to get back to proper form.
This is like one of the 3 channels that I keep notifications on for. Don't want to miss a single upload
I know you do it for dramatic effect, but when you're whispering, if you could normalize the final volume levels so your music doesn't overpower your script, I think that'd be really great for your already awesome channel
Love the content bro. Every video alwasys an absolute banger. Cant believe you don't have more subs but keep up the great work🔥
20:50 no man you are 😅
Amazing video, just wrote my bachelor’s thesis concerning this topic! Please do something about Heat Checks next 🔥
Dont let this distract you from the fact that Klay Thompson went 0-10 in a elimination game
Lmao
Duality… hot hands need cold hands
Man, this is amazing, I only wish you could get crunchier with the Stats, that'd be amazing with your presentation style.
These videos are very high quality man, thought u had like a million subs at least
dude the production on these videos are nuts & the content as always fascinating af, keep it up man, only a matter of time before i click on one of your videos and see the sub count > a couple mill
Lowkey believe it for my golf game as well. More confident I get with my club, more peace of mind I get. More peace of mind = less stress = better overall play
I studied this exactly as part of my own thesis. At the time though the report you’re referencing wasn’t published just yet but I do remember having been influenced by it. Paul Bessire graduated from the same graduate program as I did and had a pretty big influence on ncaa bracketology and algorithms being used to ingest and analyze scenarios which led to my own passion of consumer data and writing algorithms for Nielsen shopper data for a while. The issue back then and clearly still is today - the maths is correct but the framework is, and always has been wrong. This isn’t a bridge to Monty Hall. They kept saying that idk why. Hit hand relies on statistically more SKILLED SHOOTERS have the green light and EXPECTED to score a majority of their point from 3s or perimeter shots. I remember they used Hubert back then too. I debunked this pretty aggressively. Do you know what’s unique about the anecdote of Hubert and the first 3 balls? And all players. THEY START IN THE CORNERS lol. Me and Paul decided the ppl who go along with this didn’t hoop. The right corner 3 is the toughest statistically. Go do the maths… we did. The left corner 3 is bad but not quite as difficult. BUT again using 3 point data is pretty dumb for reasons i mentioned . Hot hand isn’t implicitly analyzing set feet or which hand they shoot with. To keep comment as short as I can let’s keep using the 3pt contest bc it proves how this framework does not apply. In Steph’s record 31 points, he opened with 2 missed then hit 6 straight. He then missed 3 balls at the top of the key. These are statistically by FAR the balls with the higher chance of going on. But where the research saying hot hand falls apart is when adjusting for the individual’s shooter ability to make 3s. Flipping a coin isn’t shooting a ball. And shooting an uncontested ball in rhythm no defense feet set isn’t appropriate for “hot hand” analysis. Not sure why ppl wouldn’t grasp that. Meaning, Steph made 31 of 40 balls. He had a hot hand? Really? In 2021 that same year in GAME, Steph shot 43%. HOWEVER he was statistically better in game when shooting uncontested 3s. At st the top of the key at home where the data was collected he was just shy of 80%. Meaning if you took 6 of his balls shot at home from the top of the key uncontested, he would have made 5. But in the 3pt contest he only made 3. But you’d still say he had a hot hand. That notion implies statistical significance above the norm. The research does not prove that. Different shooters have different level of skills that deviate from efficiency to shoot the ball ~286 inches from the rim. Hitting shots beyond 3 doesn’t mean the hand is hot. Not without a complete picture. Flipping a coin is chance. Finding range, getting touch on the ball and feel for the arena as far as background and depth all matters. A decade ago I also studied this at Rucker park. Outdoor yields FAR different results for the above reasons. Anyone who hoops will tell you it’s much harder to shoot outside. You wouldn’t use that though right? The type of player as well playing at Rucker isn’t a pure shooter often. It would be like the study that shows how elite snipers rarely miss after the first engagement in a series of volleys. No sht! They have range and a good feeling for environmental factors. A shooter mid game will exploit a defense or a players inability to get off a screen in the shooting side again them which impacts “hot hand”. There’s rarely some factor that isn’t observable . And hot hand erases these influences And it’s intellectually inappropriate. The exact same way there’s absolutely no such thing as clutch shooting. There’s no such thing as hot hand how it’s currently being described In this framework with this limited of data. A player like Steph will make many shots in a row but that’s expected given his % efficiency in different situations. Maybe he had a shorter defender. Klay Thompson for example is taller than Charles Barkley and Draymond Green and has a high release. The research published didn’t analyze these critical factor nor did it assess developing a standardized metric to account for the varying level of skill across participants to actually shoot 3s, uncontested 3s, and compare that against the area it was made. Another notable example is ever notice the NBAs longest shooters always “shoot from the lot”? I studied this and in fact each player has a spot. young and Lillard love right at the 45 degree angle or so - I suspect they prefer to line up their shooting elbow with the back corner of the backboard. Whereas Steph is lethal off center left or right beyond 25 feet. If you take 10 of his shots and notate he made 5 with the final 4 all being makes, you wouldn’t say he had a “hot hand”. If he shot and made those 5 from the top of the key butnkets pretend he got one more shot but this time it was from the corner on a new defender contested. Is it going in? The hot hand model implies higher than not chance but I bet you he doesn’t make that ball. You have to factor first and foremost are we talking the greatest shooter in history or a guy like KAT who shoots opportunistically? I dare you to say he has hot hand and I promise you I will systematically debunk that.
The point is, hot hand in and of itself is not a uniform definition. And it’s not Monty hall with how they used it. Fundamentally yes but no that bridge isn’t as sturdy upon a great deal of scrutiny. While I normally love a contrarian bit of research, but it seems there was confirmation bias at times limiting how the framework was developed atleast in the published studies.
Another element is the fact that the quality of your play on any given day is reflected in whether you are in an up streak or a down streak. Since underlying skill fluctuates to some degree, dependent on sleep, mood, nutrition, warmup quality, etc, more of the makes are probably from shots taken on a good day, and there are more likely to be sequences of consecutive makes on the good day, and thus there is a larger sample size of the fourth shot after three consecutive makes from the good days vs the bad days. Likewise, there are more likely to negative streaks on bad days, and hence a fourth shot after three misses is more likely to be taken on a bad day.
It sucks the algorithm didn't bless this video on release. This may be your best work yet, and that's saying a lot
The algo got this to me but it needs to pick your channel up full time man
haha thank you!
Most underrated channel, by far.
It feels bad to be watching this for free. I can't reduce what I think of this video into better words.
I love the editing on the video. Really clean work!
You need to blow up brother, your videos are incredible!
love how much work goes into these
Michael, I have been studying the phenomena you describe in your videos in great depth over the past few years, and through my learning I have been successful at both statistical prediction as well as identifying underlying structures and rules that govern probability. Would love to talk to ya if you’re ever interested.
New vid so excited to watch ❤
Abstract concepts are my favorite type of content 🙂
It could also be explained with flow state. You stop thinking and just do. While after several misses you start thinking about what you have to do better and might loose confidence.
Would be interesting to do a study about momentum in hockey. I feel like there are bigger momentum shifts even within a game than in any other sport.
Anyways love your videos!
Million Dollar Studio production quality, keep it up Mike!!
Another scorching hot video🔥🔥
Heat is real with MacKelvie
Great video once again, though I don't really know why we started making an inspirational documentary about arcades in the middle there
The thing which isn’t accounted for in this is increase self-confidence after making shots but also guarded more tight if you make more shots.
I remember a time when we were down 15 in a game then suddenly I was able to make a few shots in a row and was able to get 14 points through 2’s. Then afterwards I started getting guarded tightly my shooting was still good but slightly less.
When I’m not sure I’ll make a shot I may or may not make a shot.. but when I know I’m going to make my next shot I make it. I can’t make myself know but the more I make the more I know…
I think confidence and self-belief (or conversely, self-doubt) play a big role in making heat “real”. I was the shooter specialist on my MS and HS teams, and yeah, when the ball goes in the hoop a couple times it starts to feel bigger… and sometimes it feels like there’s a lid on it. I went 1 for 9 once, I also went 6 for 7 once. 🤷♂️
"Fooled by Randomness" now I know what you've been reading!
I feel like everyone has experienced “the hot hand” at some point in their life. Everything slows down, you are living purely in the moment and everything is coming naturally. It’s like you are subconsciously playing/doing something. A lot of it is confidence. When something’s clicking, you don’t have to think about it, it just works. Vice versa for “the yips.” I love math/science, I love analytics, but I feel like mathematicians and scientists will often forget that people are not equations lol. The only way to understand or explain momentum is to experience it.
MICHAEL, YOUR CONTENT IS ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE. YOU HAVE THE HOT HAND. KEEP IT UP!
Thank you!
Only aperson who has never had a hot hand would question it like this, it's a subconscious reaction to a variety of circumstances in the flow of a game when you get in flow of the present moment.
You clearly are passionate and care about your videos it really comes through ❤
The most underrated youtuber in history.
Basketball is a skill game shooting a three pointer is a skill, confidence has a lot to do with hitting a three ball.
My self if I hit 3 x three point shots my confidence is up and become more focused so my muscle memory + confidence + wanting the ball + my team mates look for the hot hand = a better chance in making the next shot
I know right but it just goes that way
Great to watch this and upload more please
I think the hit hand is definetely real but it’s mostly mental. After a few misses you start to overthink your form or hesitate on shots but when you make some you shoot with no hesitation and full confidence in your form