Basketball Heat Check: Is the Hot Hand Fact or Fiction?

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2021

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

From the playground to the gym to the NBA Conference Finals...the basketball court is ruled not by an iron fist, but by the “hot hand.” Shooters demand the ball when they get a hot hand. Teammates feed the player with the hot hand. Coaches draw up plays for the hot hand. But what if there is actually no such thing as the “hot hand?” For decades, that’s been the belief of Nobel Prize winning scientists who insist that what looks like a player who can’t miss...is really just a statistical fluke. Author Ben Cohen penned a book on the subject, “The Hot Hand,” and he joins the show for a scientific heat check now that the conference finals are in full swing. Is the burning sensation is a verifiable reality, or just a puff of smoke? Then, Pablo seeks to turn his park hobby into disc golf pro Paul McBeth’s million dollar endorsement deal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the game of basketball.
0:02.3	You've got to find the hot hand.
0:04.3	If you're out on a basketball court and somebody has a hot hand and you decide not to get them the ball, it's a fight that takes place.
0:13.6	What is the matter with you?
0:14.8	It's understood in the game of basketball.
0:17.5	If you have the hot hand, you go to the hot hand.
0:20.9	If you go away from the hot hand, it's going to be a problem.
0:26.2	Whether you're on a playground or deep in the playoffs, one thing is obvious.
0:32.2	The court is ruled not by an iron fist, but by the hot hand.
0:38.7	You feed the hot hand, you stoke the hot hand, you aim to warm yourself by its flames.
0:46.2	So today, as the conference finals are now in full swing, a scientific heat check into whether that burning sensation is a verifiable reality,
0:58.9	or just the puff of smoke. I'm Pablo Torre. It's Wednesday, June 23rd. This is ESPN Daily.
1:11.0	Ben Cohen, we go back, way back, actually, to being young 20-something journalist in New York
1:17.3	City, but I want to start out here by you explaining to our audience where it is that you work
1:22.4	and what it is that you do.
1:24.5	I work for the Wall Street Journal, where I cover sports, and I mostly report about the NBA. So you do. I work for the Wall Street Journal where I cover sports and I mostly report about the NBA.
1:30.7	So you report on the NBA for the journal and you're also an author, Ben. And it's the book that you've
1:36.4	written that makes me want to talk to you today because that book is titled The Hot Hand. And it's a
1:44.0	book that I have been thinking
1:45.2	about a lot lately especially in a week like this just days after a guy named Kevin Herder
1:52.6	apparently became the greatest shooter of all time and ruined my life because the book is all
1:58.9	about performances like Kevin Herders like like Terrence Manns, a couple
	...

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