Anybody who follows basketball has seen it before: a player hits a momentum-changing three point shot. His team gets the ball back and tears down the court. Will the same player feel he (or she) has a hot hand and try another long-distance shot? Chances are he will. And chances are he'll miss. And chances are he'll do the same exact thing the next game.

That's the conclusion of a statistical analysis of a few hundred professional basketball players (291 from the NBA, 41 from the WNBA). The goal was not only to find out whether the frequently discussed "hot hand"—a shooter who's connecting on most of the shots he takes—exists, but also to find out whether players could identify when they're more likely to be hot, and adjust their behavior accordingly. The answer to both appears to be no, but there may be some other learning going on on the court.

The authors' test of a hot hand was very simple: for every three-point shot attempted, the authors tracked the results, and the results of the next consecutive shot. When analyzed this way, hands appeared to get cold. If a player took another three-pointer after making one, their success rate was 6 percent lower than if they took it after having missed one. In other words, you were more likely to make a three pointer if you'd missed on the previous one. In contrast, there was little difference in the success rates of ensuing two-point shots.

If players learned by experience, they should be able to pick up on that trend and adjust their behavior accordingly. In fact, they did the exact opposite. Forty-one percent of the time after a player made a three-point shot, they'd attempt another one. If they missed, that rate dropped to 30 percent. The implication here is that the players aren't able to recognize the pattern of misses after successful long-distance shots.

The authors perform a whole host of other statistcal analyses that support this general contention, but they also recognize that statistics alone don't paint a complete picture. For example, a missed three may prompt a player to try harder to make sure his or her next long-distance shot comes at a better time (when they're less rushed, when they have a better angle). Defensive adjustments may also play a role, as defenders could tighten up on someone who just burned them from behind the 3-point arc, and relax after someone has just heaved up an awkward shot.

Nature Communications, 2011. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1580 (About DOIs).