🔥 Is the Hot Hand a Real Thing? Pelicans Are Worse, Cavs' Big Men, Team USA's Close Call, and More!

Welcome to the NBA Librarian Weekly, where we curate and summarize the best NBA content of the week.

<1000 words each week, I consume and summarize so you don’t have to.

In Today's Edition:

1. Is the Hot Hand a Real Thing?

2. The Pelicans Are in Big Trouble

3. Team USA LUCKY to get by South Sudan

4. Drawing Inspo from the Warriors: Kenny Atkinson an …

5. Bronny James: The Good, Bad & Ugly

Is the Hot Hand a Real Thing?

Michael Mackelvie dives into the evolution of the hotly contested "hot hand" phenomenon in basketball. For years, the idea that a player's chances of hitting a shot increase after making several in a row has sparked debates among fans, players, and academics alike.

Here’s a summary, but I highly recommend watching the whole thing:

1. The hot hand debate began with researchers like Gilovich, Vallone, and Tversky, who found no statistical proof of its existence through NBA game analyses and controlled shooting experiments. Early research labeled successful shot sequences as mere coincidences, similar to flipping a coin.

2. Decades later, researchers Adam Sanjuro and Joshua Miller revisited this data with modern statistical methods and new studies, including those with Spanish basketball players. Their findings revealed that some players did indeed perform better after consecutive successful shots, a trend also seen in Three-Point Contests with stars like Craig Hodges and Steph Curry.

3. A major turning point occurred when these new studies identified and corrected a mathematical error in the original research, challenging the past conclusions and confirming the hot hand as a real, measurable phenomenon.

This revelation highlights the importance of precise statistical analysis in understanding sports performance and momentum.