Dr. Vitagliano Sports Psychology
Article Critique
The article “How Should “Hot” Players in Basketball be Defended? The Use of Fast-and-Frugal Heuristics by Basketball Coaches and Players in Response to Streakiness”, by Peter Csapo, Simcha Avugos, Markus Raab, and Michael Bar-Eli seeks to explain how to cut down an offensive player’s scoring if they get a “hot hand”, or score consecutive baskets in a row in during the course of a basketball game. The fast and frugal heuristic helps someone create and keep the hot hand because the fast and frugal heuristic is when someone could make calm, quick, …show more content…
That was also was correct because “Players tended to choose “shoot” significantly more often if Jordan showed a streaky performance compared to non-streaky sequences” (pg.1585). “In 10 sequences, Jordan displayed two runs of at least three consecutive hits, as people generally need to observe three repeated events to perceive streakiness (Carlson & Shu, 2007), and three consecutive shots are typically associated with having a hot hand in the literature” (pg.1583). So what this research states, is that since Jordan made three in a row, the player most likely will choose for Jordan to shoot the next time he gets the ball rather than pass, endless defense is more intense due to the …show more content…
The article pointed out a major weakness stating, “In the experiment, we used double-teaming as a proxy for increased defensive pressure. “While we are aware that other ways exist to increase defensive pressure, e.g., letting another defender guard the hot player or changing the defensive format to zone or press…” (pg.1584). When double teaming is your only means of defense, you will do it a little more than usual. Changing the defender can be better than double teaming at certain points of a game. If a successful shooter gets a streak going, simply changing the defensive player to a taller player may be all that’s needed. A taller player would be able to get a hand in the face of the shooter much easier than a shorter defender. A strong limitation was not being able to do this experiment on players in the gym actually playing. “Arkes (2013) tested this conjecture with a large sample and concluded that the inability to detect the hot hand is more likely due to the fact that it occurs very rarely than its non-existence” (pg.1581). They could be in the gym for hours before someone makes three moderately contested shots in a row because wide open layups does not count toward being hot. There has to be a degree of