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Mike G · Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2005 10:53 am Post subject: Kobe's "hot hand"

In scoring 62 points (in 33 min.), Kobe made 18 of 31 shots from the floor (4 of 10 from the arc). This is perilously close to the zone that accepted 'hot hand' debunkers are unable to see anything 'hot' about a guy's shooting.

Counting 3's as 1.5 FG, Kobe made just about 2/3 of his shots (kindasorta). As I recall, the 'just say no to hot hands' folks like to lay out shot sequences, as hits or misses, and compare the likelihood of a hit, following a miss or a hit.

So a player making 2/3 of his shots could shoot in a sequence like this:

HMHHMHHMHHMHHMH...

At this point, he has 10 hits and 5 misses, exactly 2/3. But the proof that the player is 'not hot' lies in the fact that after a miss he shoots 100%, and after a hit he only shoots 50%.

Better not pass to this guy unless he has just missed a shot! The conclusion from such a shooting spell is that the shooter is showing an 'anti-hot-hand' bias.

Now, there may be further developments in this field. And if someone has kept up with the latest, I'd be interested in seeing an analysis of Kobe's shots, from play-by-plays. After all, Phil might need to make adjustments before the team starts to think they should 'get it to Kobe' , when he's like this.

kjb · Joined: 03 Jan 2005 Posts: 865 Location: Washington, DC

Shoot, I had the hot hand a few weeks ago, and I'm old with creaky knees, a bad shoulder and carrying too much weight. "Hot hand" or "The Zone" exists whether we can figure out a way to measure it or not.

Ed **Küpfer** · Joined: 30 Dec 2004 Posts: 786 Location: Toronto

Carlos · Joined: 21 Jan 2005 Posts: 64 Location: Montevideo, Uruguay

I have always been a bit puzzled by the "randomness" thing. After all, if a guy isn't shooting well, he probably will change his shot selection (or the point guard will not give him the ball). Or if a guy is having a good night, his teammates will try to get him the ball, right? What I mean is that the players and coaches are consciously trying to make it less random. Of course, the defense reacts to these things too, so maybe they even out in the end.

Ed **Küpfer** · Joined: 30 Dec 2004 Posts: 786 Location: Toronto

HoopStudies · Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2005 11:01 am Post subject:

jmethven · Joined: 16 May 2005 Posts: 51

I hate to appear subjective, but I'm fairly certain that I, personally, tend to shoot in streaks when I play hoops in my driveway. What often happens is that I can get in a little rhythm, where I just repeat the same motion over and over, a motion that having once led to a made shot, continues to lead to more made shots. Does that qualify as a 'hot hand'?
Going on this topic further, I use a shooting drill where you start off by shooting jumpers close to the basket, and once you make one, you move back further, until you eventually get to the 3-point line. If you miss, you start back over. For me at least, it is much easier to make 3-pointers after running this drill, since it gets my body into the rhythm of a shooter. Maybe this isn't a 'hot hand' scenario per se, but I see a lot of similarities between it and the aforementioned free throw experiment.

bchaikin · Joined: 27 Jan 2005 Posts: 689 Location: cleveland, ohio

i find it ironic that in phil jackson's book he constantly emphasizes the need for kobe bryant to be more of a team player (i.e. shoot less and look for his teammates more), then chastizes him on the few occasions he doesn't shoot enough (and the team loses), but now in 05-06 under the tutelage of jackson he is still getting pretty much the same high touches/min that he's gotten in the past but he is shooting the ball with a much higher percentage of his touches (and passing with a lower percentage) than ever before...

Kevin Pelton · Posted: Fri Dec 23, 2005 2:09 pm Post subject:

In the book he was playing with three Hall of Famers. Now, not so much.

bchaikin · Joined: 27 Jan 2005 Posts: 689 Location: cleveland, ohio

In the book he was playing with three Hall of Famers. Now, not so much...

actually simulation shows that on that 03-04 lakers team if you replace payton with smush parker from 05-06 and malone with lamar odom 05-06 the team wins just as many games. the key difference is replacing shaq with chris mihm 05-06, where the 03-04 lakers then win 10-11 less games per average 82 game season...

i just wonder if in the games shaq missed in 03-04 (that bryant did not miss) if kobe bryant averaged 32/33 pts/g like he is now, or if for some reason jackson has changed his tune. bryant is now shooting more per touch than he ever has in his career, but has teammates with Scoring FG%s (combining 2pters, 3pters, and FTs) very similar to those in 03-04 (mihm at 54%, parker at 55%, odom at 53% compared to shaq at 56%, malone at 54%, and payton at 52%), and parker and odom have similar low rates of turnovers as did payton and malone. so its not like his current teammates are the gang that couldn't shoot straight - jackson is now either allowing him - or telling him - to shoot more, but in either case isn't telling him now to be "...more of a team player..."...

its quite a different scenario from the scathing things he said about bryant in his book....

KD · Joined: 30 Jan 2005 Posts: 163

Mike G · Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2005 6:42 am Post subject:

JMethven's exercise of hitting shots and continuing to hit while moving further out is a good one. I've seen Karl Malone do that against Duncan and Robinson in a playoff game.

Kobe Bryant's game of 1-7-03, in which he hit 9 straight 3-ptrs (and a record 12 for the game) had no evidence of a 'hot hand' as defined by Alan Reifman:

http://www.hs.ttu.edu/Hdfs3390/hh_kobe.htm

"..the nine consecutive hits from three-point range were not statistically noteworthy. "

In the article linked above, the 9 consecutive hits are treated as a single event: a single 'run' of hits; and the number of these 'runs' in that game (and in the latest Kobe-burst?) don't look 'hot', to Mr. Reifman.

The definition of 'hot hand' can be moved further and further from what seems reasonable to 100% of coaches, players, and basketball fans; and at each distance can be called 'statistically insignificant'.