TL;DR
This paper investigates NBA team win records from 1995 to 2018, revealing that observed persistence in winning streaks can be explained by random models, challenging the idea of genuine streak effects.
Contribution
It compares empirical NBA win data with random models, demonstrating that perceived streak persistence may be an illusion rather than a real phenomenon.
Findings
Empirical data shows no significant deviation from random models.
Persistence in win records can be explained by chance.
Challenges previous claims of streak effects in NBA data.
Abstract
Among the sports fans beliefs about "hot hands" and "winning streaks" are widely spread, while the scientific debate about these effects is still ongoing. Recently in a paper by P. Ferreira [Physica A 500: 92-96] detrended fluctuation analysis was applied to the NBA teams' win records. It was shown that 28 considered NBA teams exhibit persistence in the win record time series. In this paper we take the same data set and compare the obtained results against various random models. We find that the empirical results are consistent with the results obtained from various simple random models.
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