The Hot Hand in Sports

The Washington Capitals begin play in the Stanley Cup finals tonight, seeking to end a 26-year title drought in the nation's capital within the four major North American sports (football, baseball, basketball, and ice hockey). If the Capitals hoist the Cup, it will be their first time in their 44-year history. The Caps made the finals once before, 20 years ago in 1998, losing to Detroit.

The city's NFL team, which arrived in Washington in 1937 after a brief history in Boston, had a nice run in the 1980s and early 90s, winning the Super Bowl after the 1982, 1987, and 1991 seasons. The 1991 football championship (claimed in the 1992 Super Bowl) is the last major sports title won by a team from the nation's capital. Beyond 1991, Washington has made the NFL playoffs only six times, never winning more than one game in any postseason. Going way, way back, Washington captured pre-Super Bowl NFL titles in 1937 and 1942. These moments of triumph were followed a few years later by a 25-year string of playoff absences (1946-1970).

On the hardwood, the city's NBA team -- known as the Capital Bullets in 1973-74 after making a short move from Baltimore, the Washington Bullets (1974-1997)* and then Wizards (1997-on) -- has captured only one title, 40 years ago.

On the baseball diamond, Washington has been home to three franchises: the current team known as the Nationals (moved to DC in 2005, after playing from 1969-2004 as the Montreal Expos), the organization known since 1972 as the Texas Rangers (who had been the Washington Senators from 1961-1971), and the organization known since 1961 as the Minnesota Twins (previously another incarnation of the Washington Senators, from 1901-1960). So with three franchises, collectively playing roughly 85 seasons in the nation's capital, how many World Series titles does Washington have to show for it? That would be one. Led by legendary pitcher Walter Johnson, the 1924 Senators won it all. There is a famous quote long attached to Washington, DC, inspired by poor play early in the Senators' history: "First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League."

A Sports Illustrated article from last October summarizes the city's sports frustrations succinctly: "The sheer number of distressing losses is staggering, especially in recent years, when the Nationals, Wizards and Capitals have all been contenders, at least within their conferences. The Caps and Nats in particular have a penchant for heartbreak, especially in deciding games..."

To summarize, Washington, DC's baseball, basketball, football, and hockey teams have played a collective 250 seasons (roughly). During that time, these teams have combined for seven championships.**

As the SI article notes, Washington's professional sports futility is not quite as bad, if one includes soccer in the mix: "For some reason, D.C. United is immune to the curse. The MLS side has won four MLS Cups, though not since 2004..."

Also, at the college level, Georgetown University's men's basketball program under Coach John Thompson and star center (and current Georgetown coach) Patrick Ewing made three Final Fours in the four years from 1981-82 to 1984-85, with a national title in 1983-84.

Thus, although Washington sports fans have not seen major championships in recent decades, their teams are generally competitive.

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*The renaming from Bullets to Wizards was prompted by two developments. One was the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a friend of Bullets' owner Abe Pollin, and the other was DC's high rate of gun-related violence at the time.

**Worth mentioning, at least as an historical footnote, are the barnstorming Washington Generals, variously described as the "perennial opponents" and "stooges" for the Harlem Globetrotters. As noted on the Generals' Wikipedia page, "While the Globetrotters play tricks and spectacular displays of skill for the crowd, the Generals appear to attempt to play a 'normal' game of basketball... not interfering in the Globetrotters' tricks." The Generals are estimated to have lost over 16,000 times to the Globetrotters and beaten them somewhere between three and six times.

ESPN The Magazine has an online article today on the Golden State Warriors' offensive explosiveness. Specifically, the article provides statistics on the Warriors' frequency of going on 10-0 and 15-0 runs, and examines whether there are distinguishing circumstances that seem to presage such runs and any effective strategies for opponents to short-circuit them (spoiler alert: time-outs don't seem to work).

Back in 2015-16, I examined the explosiveness of the Warriors (which I defined as scoring 18 or more points in six-minute intervals) and of the eight college teams seeded No. 1 or No. 2 in March Madness (defined as scoring 15 or more points in five-minute intervals).

One pattern I found for the Warriors in the final 6:00 of regulation play is that the further they were behind, the greater the offensive bursts they exhibited.

The college teams' explosiveness did not seem to predict NCAA-tourney success. Xavier was the most explosive team among the eight I studied by a good margin (13 explosions in its last 10 regular-season games, with no other team higher than nine). The Musketeers also had the fastest tempo (possessions per game) among the eight teams. Despite these seeming advantages, however, Xavier was eliminated in the second round.

With Wednesday night's blowout regular-season-ending win over the Milwaukee Bucks, the Philadelphia 76ers set a record for most consecutive wins entering the playoffs (16). By this measure, the 76ers could lay claim to being the all-time hottest NBA team entering the playoffs.

However, by another measure of end-of-season hotness, which I developed in 2015, Philly would not quite be at the top. As shown in the following graphic (which you can click to enlarge), the 2011-12 San Antonio Spurs were the hottest team in recent years entering the NBA playoffs. Note that my method uses only a team's final 10 games of the regular season (to make things comparable among teams), so one could argue that I am not doing justice to the full 16-game length of the Sixers' streak.


Also, my measure takes into account the strength of the opposition and it is here, in my view, that Philly suffers. If you win a game, your hotness "temperature" is multiplied by [1 + opponent's winning percentage entering the game]. Thus, when the 2016-17 Golden State Warriors beat the .781 San Antonio Spurs with eight games left in the season, the Warriors' cumulative hotness value after the team's prior game would be multiplied by a hefty 1.781. In finishing out the season, this year's 76ers beat such weak teams as the Atlanta Hawks (twice, when the Hawks' winning percentages were .280 and .296), the Dallas Mavericks (.300), the Brooklyn Nets (.325), and the New York Knicks (.360). As a result, the Sixers' winning streak has included such anemic multipliers as 1.280, 1.296, 1.300, 1.325, and 1.360. Philly's toughest opponent in its last 10 games was Cleveland (.620), thus the Sixers' win over the Cavaliers gave Philly a multiplier of 1.620.

Just as my system rewards wins over good teams more than wins over bad teams, it punishes losses to bad teams more severely than losses to good teams. After a loss, a team's previous cumulative temperature is multiplied straight up by the opponent's winning percentage entering the game. If you lose to a .750 team, your temperature to that point is multiplied by .750. If you lose to a .400 team, your temperature is multiplied by .400, which lowers your temperature much more.

High hotness by this measure does not necessarily translate into playoff success, so Philadelphia fans should be OK with the fact that their team is not the hottest entering the playoffs in the last few years. Neither the 2011-12 nor 2014-15 editions of the San Antonio Spurs, which finished their respective regular seasons playing at pretty scorching levels, won the NBA championship (note that the 2015 Spurs entered their final game with a temperature of 52.43, but lost to a .543 New Orleans squad, roughly halving the Spurs' temperature to 28.47).

Among recent NBA champions, only the 2017 Warriors had a high temperature (26.00). The three title-winners before them had uniformly low temps:

• The 2016 champion Cavaliers lost four of their final 10 regular-season games, yielding a microscopic temperature of 0.70 (the theoretical minimum would be zero, if a team lost its last 10 games to opponents who were all winless on the season, but no NBA team has ever gone winless).
• The 2015 champion Warriors were 8-2 over their final 10 games and had a relatively low temperature of 9.76.
• The 2014 champion Spurs were 6-4 in their final 10 and had a tiny temperature of 1.29.

I occasionally get asked how I got interested in streaks. There's no way to know for sure, but I suspect that growing up in Los Angeles as a basketball fan in the early 1970s was a factor. This era included both an 88-game winning streak by coach John Wooden's UCLA program and a 33-game roll by the L.A. Lakers. These remain as records for men's college basketball and the NBA, respectively.

UCLA BASKETBALL

Following a January 23, 1971 loss to Notre Dame (when I was eight years old), UCLA rattled off 15 straight wins to claim the school's fifth straight NCAA championship. This was not an easy run to the title, as six of the 15 wins were by four points or fewer (see here for UCLA season-by-season logs from that era). The next season, 1971-72, was far easier for the Bruins. Sophomore Bill Walton joined the squad,* leading UCLA to a 30-0 record and another championship. Only two games were closer than 10 points, a five-point win in the NCAA title game vs. Florida State and a six-point conference win at Oregon State. Another 30-0, title season followed in 1972-73. Two six-point conference wins were the Bruins' closest of the season.

With seven straight national championships and 75 straight wins, UCLA entered the 1973-74 season, Walton's senior year. Having survived 65-64 against a talented Maryland squad in the season's second game, UCLA ran its season record to 13-0 and overall streak to 88 games, entering the site of its last lost -- Notre Dame -- on January 19, 1974. Having taken a late 70-59 lead over the Irish (with no three-point shot or shot clock), the Bruins seemed almost certain to extend their streak. However, UCLA inexplicably gave up a 12-0 run to close the game (shown here on YouTube), yielding a 71-70 Notre Dame victory. The Bruins' failure to get a tip-in on a final possession is painful from a UCLA perspective. The Bruins' streak of titles also fell that season, as they couldn't hold a seven-point lead in the second overtime period over NC State in the national semifinals.

(Another championship factory in Westwood was the UCLA men's volleyball program, under coach Al Scates. From 1970, when the sport became sanctioned by the NCAA, to 2006, Scates's teams won 19 national titles, including 11 of the first 15 NCAA tourneys held.)

LAKERS

Partially overlapping UCLA's 88-game basketball winning streak in time was the Lakers' 33-game winning stretch (November 5, 1971- January 7, 1972). In 2007, on the 35th anniversary of the Lakers' streak, I wrote a detailed analysis of it, so I won't do so here. This was an old squad, led by aging superstars Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlain, so it would not have seemed a likely candidate for such a long winning streak.

The 1971-72 Laker team also won the franchise's first NBA title in Los Angeles (after the Minneapolis Lakers had won championships in 1949, '50, '52, '53, and '54). The Lakers have won several more NBA titles (1979-80, 1981-82, 1984-85, 1986-87, 1987-88, 1999-2000, 2000-01, 2001-02, 2008-09, and 2009-10; season-by-season log). The Lakers' 1986-87 and 1987-88 titles (the second of which had been guaranteed by L.A. coach Pat Riley) were the first back-to-back championships by an NBA team since the Boston Celtics won in 1967-68 and 1968-69 (list of NBA champions).

The aforementioned Chamberlain, who played the final five campaigns of his 14-year NBA career with the Lakers, was like a one-man record book (see the chart on page 169 of the league's golden-anniversary volume NBA at 50 for details). What some observers consider most remarkable is that Chamberlain never fouled out of an NBA game.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, another legendary NBA center who played roughly the final three-quarters of his career with the Lakers (1975-76 to 1988-89), had a few noteworthy streaks himself. On the advanced analytic metric of Player Efficiency Rating (PER), Abdul-Jabbar led the league nine times in an 11-year span (1970-71 through 1980-81). He also once had a streak of 787 consecutive games with 10 points or more.

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Being such a large city, Los Angeles has a large number of professional teams (especially if one counts nearby Anaheim), along with major universities UCLA and USC.

USC FOOTBALL

Whereas the Bruins have been a national power in basketball, the Trojans have done likewise in football. From 2003-05, USC won 34 straight on the gridiron, one of the longest winning streaks in college-football history. The Trojans shared the 2003 mythical national championship (i.e., non-playoff determined) and won the mythical championship in 2004 during the streak. It was against Texas in early 2006 (playing for the 2005 mythical title) that USC's winning streak ended. Note that, because of NCAA findings of improper financial assistance to Trojan running back Reggie Bush during this period, some record-keeping organizations have stripped USC of wins and/or titles with which Bush was associated.

(Also, USC won five straight college baseball national championships from 1970-1974; had separate streaks of nine and seven straight NCAA men's track and field titles; and two separate stretches of four straight NCAA men's swimming titles.)

DODGERS

After winning the World Series in 1988, the Dodgers did not return to the Fall Classic until this past autumn, ending the franchise's 28-year drought (1989-2016) without a National League pennant. However, in falling to the Houston Astros in seven games, the Dodgers extended their stretch without a World Series championship to 29 years.

Between 1955, when the Brooklyn Dodgers won the franchise's first world title, and 1988, the team won six World Series (1955, 1959, 1963, 1965, 1981, and 1988), the last five of which in Los Angeles. During this span, there was thus never longer than a 16-year gap between world titles (year-to-year log).

Individual Dodger players have had a few interesting streaks during the franchise's L.A. years. Many baseball fans (at least those of a certain age) will be familiar with how Dodger pitcher Orel Hershiser set the MLB record of 59 consecutive scoreless innings in 1988, passing another Dodger, Don Drysdale, who had thrown 58 straight shutout innings 20 years earlier. What I hadn't realized is that yet another Dodger, Zack Greinke, moved into fourth place on the all-time list in 2015 with 45 and 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings (St. Louis's Bob Gibson is in third place with 47 in 1968).

Another set of streaks, reflecting the Dodgers' perennially strong farm system, involves consecutive Rookie of the Year winners in the National League. L.A. players won five straight from 1992-1996 (Eric Karros, Mike Piazza, Raul Mondesi, Hideo Nomo, and Todd Hollandsworth) and four straight from 1979-1982 (Rick Sutcliffe, Steve Howe, Fernando Valenzuela, and Steve Sax). Talking about Valenzuela, his "Fernandomania" 1981 season featured a lot of hot pitching. I wrote about Fernandomania on its 30th anniversary in 2011.

Finally, continuing on the theme of great Dodger pitchers, Clayton Kershaw led the National League in low Earned Run Average four straight years (2011-2014), whereas Sandy Koufax did so five straight years (1962-1966).

ANGELS

If one wants to take literally the name Los Angeles Angels, even though the team plays in Anaheim, then I would include two players' individual streaks in the present essay.

Mike Trout has recorded at least 7 offensive Wins Above Replacement (oWAR) for each of the last six seasons. In order to find streaks matching or exceeding Trout's, you need to look at players such as Willie Mays (nine straight years, 1957-1965), Babe Ruth (seven straight, 1926-1932), and Ted Williams (six straight, 1941-1942, 1946-1949, interrupted by military service).

In terms of Angel pitching, it would be hard to top Nolan Ryan's eight years with the club (1972-1979). Ryan had a stretch of five years out of six with 300-plus strikeouts per year (1972, '73, '74, '76, and '77). He also had some career milestones in 1975, but suffered through elbow pain that year and eventually had surgery. Only Ryan and Randy Johnson (each with six) have more than three career 300-plus strikeout seasons. Johnson had a streak of five straight 300-plus strikeout seasons (1998-2002; be sure to look at the 1998 TOTAL line in his season-by-season log, as he pitched for two teams that year).

PRO FOOTBALL (RAMS, CHARGERS, and RAIDERS)

Pro football has had an inconsistent history in the L.A. area, with the Rams (1946-1994**; 2016-present) now in their second stint there, the Chargers (1960, 2017) likewise in their second (brief) stint in L.A., and the Raiders a resident from 1982-1994. Given the Rams' longest history in L.A., I focus on them.

The L.A. Rams won the 1951 (pre-Super Bowl) NFL championship, amidst a string of four straight divisional titles (1949-1952). Several years later, however, the franchise entered a tailspin, with the Rams finishing either fifth, sixth, or seventh in their division for seven straight seasons (1959-1965). Things turned around again in 1973, with the Rams winning their division seven straight years (1973-1979), culminating in the franchise's only Super Bowl appearance as the L.A. Rams, a loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers on January 20, 1980. From 1991-1994, it was another slide for the Rams, as they finished last in their four-team division for four straight years. With that, the team was off for St. Louis.

Two L. A. Ram stalwarts, in terms of longevity, were defensive tackle Merlin Olsen with 198 consecutive starts (1962-1976) and defensive end Jack Youngblood with 184 (1972-1984).

HOCKEY (KINGS and DUCKS)

The L.A. Kings entered the NHL in the 1967-68 western expansion. An interesting piece of Kings trivia is that the franchise has won more Stanley Cups (two, 2011-12 and 2013-14) than divisional titles (one, 1990-91).

The best-known player in franchise history would have to be Wayne Gretzky, who played all or part of eight seasons with the Kings (1988-89 through 1995-96). With "The Great One," the Kings made one Stanley Cup final, losing in 1993 to Montreal. By at least one statistical metric, however, Gretzky was not as effective with the Kings as during his previous seasons with the Edmonton Oilers. Whereas Gretzky's annual Offensive Point Shares value ranged from 14.9-17.4 for six straight years with Edmonton (1981-82 through 1986-87), his OPS never exceeded 13.2 with the Kings.***

The Anaheim Ducks (originally known as the Mighty Ducks) won the Stanley Cup in 2007 and lost in the finals in 2003. Goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere was part of both teams, but was a truly dominant, hot goalie in 2003, at one point amassing three straight shutouts in one playoff series. In more recent years, the Ducks have faced nothing but playoff frustration, getting eliminated in decisive seventh games four straight years (2013, '14, '15, and '16). It is probably small consolation that their 2017 playoff ouster came in a six-game series.

SOCCER (GALAXY)

The L.A. Galaxy has been among the most successful franchises in Major League Soccer, winning five championships total, and three in a four-year span (2011, 2012, and 2014).

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*Walton was a freshman in 1970-71, but first-year players were not eligible to play varsity sports until 1972-73.

**The Rams moved from the Los Angeles Coliseum to the previously baseball-only Anaheim Stadium in 1980 and played there through 1994. To increase seating capacity for the Rams, Anaheim added double-decker stands in the baseball outfield area. After the Rams' departure to St. Louis, the outfield seats were removed, giving the Angels' ballpark a more traditional baseball feel once again.

***Don't get me wrong -- a lot of great players would love to have a 13.2 OPS for a season. It's just low relative to Gretzky's previous numbers.

Happy New Year!

Today, I am introducing a new feature for 2018 on the Hot Hand blog, which I'm calling "Streaks in the City." Each entry will feature a different North American city and discuss famous streaks its teams and athletes have recorded over the years.

The first city to be featured is Cleveland, Ohio, a city associated in many people's minds with misfortune such as municipal bankruptcy, a lake catching on fire, and sports futility. Cleveland sports teams have actually exhibited two types of futility: near misses by pretty good teams when it looked like a title might be within reach, and horrible teams.

One example of the latter is this past season's Cleveland Browns football squad, which went 0-16, prompting yesterday's "perfect season" parade by the stadium.

Yet, on a more uplifting note, we had the May 14, 2016 ESPN documentary "Believeland," chronicling the efforts of Cleveland's teams to win the city's first championship in any major sport since the Browns in 1964, followed about a month later (June 19, 2016) by LeBron James and the Cavaliers bringing the NBA title to Cleveland. Before the Cavs' championship, Cleveland's 52-year title drought (1964-2016) had been the longest active streak of its kind among North American cities. (Milwaukee now tops the leaderboard at 46 years, the Bucks' 1971 NBA title being the city's last in any pro sport.)

It can be said about all three of Cleveland's major pro-sports franchises* (and about many other teams outside of Cleveland, as well) that they have experienced a lot of losing, but have periodically had some title-contenders.

CAVALIERS

The Cavs were part of the NBA's 1970-71 expansion, going 15-67 that first season (season-by-season log). If a team's nearly 50-year history can be conveyed in a single sentence, Cleveland has alternated every few years between rock-bottom and being a playoff club. The Cavs improved over their first few years to where they made the postseason three straight years (1975-76 to 1977-78). A nine-year dry spell ensued from 1978-79 to 1986-87, in which the team only made the playoffs once, in 1984-85, with a 36-46 record. Other lowlights during this stretch included another 15-67 record in 1981-82, a parade of coaches around this time that included Don Delaney, whose coaching experience included pro softball and small-college basketball, and imposition by the NBA of a rule prohibiting teams from trading away their first-round draft-pick two years in a row, after the Cavs did so to disastrous effect.

A productive era followed from 1987-88 to 1997-98, with nine playoff appearances in 11 years. Early on in this timeframe, the Cavs benefited from up-and-coming players such as Brad Daugherty, Mark Price, and Larry Nance. A 57-25 Cleveland squad was ousted in the first round of the 1988-89 playoffs on what's famously known as "The Shot" by the Bulls' Michael Jordan in the deciding game of a 3-out-of-5 series (YouTube video), but the Cavs were unlikely to make the NBA finals that year, anyway, as Detroit was at the peak of its "Bad Boys" dynasty, winning the title in 1989 and 1990.

Next came seven straight non-playoff years from 1998-99 to 2004-05. A 17-65 record in 2002-03 put the Cavs in a position to draft a local hero from nearby Akron, LeBron James, out of high school. In James's third season, 2005-06, Cleveland was back in the playoffs, and the next year, 2006-07, the Cavs made their first-ever NBA final, losing to San Antonio. James helped Cleveland win the 2007 Eastern Conference finals by scoring the team's last 25 points in a key game of that series.

After three more successful years in Cleveland -- in terms of win-loss records, but without a return to the NBA finals -- James left after the 2009-10 season, famously "tak[ing] my talents to South Beach" via free-agency, to play for the Miami Heat (YouTube video). While James was making the NBA finals with the Heat each of the next four years and capturing two titles, Cleveland averaged 24 wins per season over the same four years.

Almost as stunningly, James returned to Cleveland via free agency for the 2014-15 season. In his three complete seasons back in Ohio, the Cavs have made the NBA finals every year (always against the Golden State Warriors), winning in 2016, but losing in 2015 and 2017.

Now, at age 33, James is still going strong. Earlier in the current 2017-18 season, he led the Cavs to a franchise-record-tying 13-game winning streak. James can't play forever and when he either retires or leaves for another team, the Cavs will probably go through a multiple-year slump, if past is indeed prologue.

INDIANS

Among MLB franchises that have won the World Series at least once -- which Cleveland did in 1948 and 1920 -- the Indians hold the longest currently active drought, 69 straight years, without a World Series title.

Still the Indians have been excellent in recent years -- even record-setting in a good way -- narrowly missing a World Series title in 2016 and compiling an American League-record** 22-game winning streak in 2017. During the latter, a new hashtag appeared on Twitter celebrating the streak: #windians. A run to a slump-ending World Series win seemed likely, especially after Cleveland took a 2-0 lead in games over the Yankees in a 3-out-of-5 series. But then, days later, it was over, as New York went on a three-game winning streak.

A look at the Indians' season-by-season log shows that, in the 11 years following the 1948 championship (1949-1959), Cleveland finished above .500 -- sometimes well above it -- 10 times. This stretch included a 111-43 record in 1954, en route to the World Series, which Cleveland lost to the New York Giants. However, in the 34 years from 1960-1993, the Indians reached or exceeded .500 only seven times.

Things have turned around in the 24 following years (1994-2017), with 16 .500-or-better seasons and three World Series appearances. These occurred in 1995 (a six-game loss to the Braves), 1997 (a seven-game loss to the Marlins, in which the Indians couldn't hold a one-run lead in the bottom of the ninth in Game 7) and 2016 (a seven-game loss to the Cubs).

As good as the Indians have been the last two seasons, it will probably take a drought-ending World Series title to really earn the moniker Windians in many fans' view.

BROWNS

A team named the Cleveland Browns has never appeared in a Super Bowl, the pro-football championship game that launched on January 15, 1967. However, a team that once was the Cleveland Browns has not only made it to, but also won, a Super Bowl. The explanation, of course, is that then-Browns owner Art Modell moved the team to Baltimore after the 1995 season (becoming the Ravens) and the Ravens won the Super after the 2000 season. In some ways, however, the connection between the 1995 Browns and 2000 Ravens is not that strong, as only two players were on both squads. The Ravens also won the Super Bowl after the 2012 season.

Prior to the 1995 move, the Browns, like the Cavaliers and Indians, enjoyed some sporadic success. Cleveland made five straight NFL playoff appearances from 1985-1989, with particularly devastating postseason losses occurring in 1985, 1987, and 1988. These are summarized here.

After the Modell move, the NFL granted Cleveland a replacement franchise, also to be known as the Browns, which would begin play in 1999. The "new" Browns have made the playoffs only once (in 2002) in their 19 years of existence, and have gone a combined 1-31 in 2016 and '17. Since 1999, the Browns have had eight general managers and nine head coaches.

Some may cite the "Cleveland Curse" for the misfortunes of the new Browns. However, as argued by Cleveland Plain-Dealer columnist and prolific book author Terry Pluto, in False Start: How the New Browns Were Set Up to Fail , structural barriers imposed by the NFL are to blame. The team faced a compressed start-up time, a weakened expansion draft, and other hindrances, which they still haven't overcome, approaching 20 years.

CONCLUSION

Cleveland has had a lot of streaks in the last roughly 70 years, most of them involving losing and droughts. The city has had some nice within-season winning streaks (such as the 2017 Indians), but in our championship-minded society, mere winning streaks aren't enough. I would expect continued shuffling between Believeland and Grieveland in the coming years, with more time spent in the latter. I don't know how much more time remains in the LeBron-led Cavaliers' championship window, especially with the Warriors being so good. The Indians should be good for a while, but the Astros, Yankees, Dodgers, Cubs, and others aren't going anywhere. That leaves the Browns...

If the city's teams all start struggling around the same time, it will not be good for the health of Clevelanders. The 2013 (pre-Cavs' title) book The Secret Lives of Sports Fans , by Eric Simons, devotes an entire chapter to Cleveland. One former resident of the city suggests that "the miserable winter weather and the lack of other [cultural, entertainment, or recreational] options" have driven Clevelanders toward an intense fandom of sports (p. 101). Another transplant from Cleveland says, "There is a bitterness, a frustration with Cleveland that cannot be matched anywhere else" (p. 100).

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*The city had an NHL team, the Cleveland Barons, in the 1970s, but it went defunct after only two seasons.

**The MLB-record winning streak is usually credited at 26, by the 1916 New York Giants. However, a tie in a darkness-shortened game has led to a controversy over the Giants' streak.

Today on ESPN.com, there's a big article on hot-hand research. The article is written primarily through the lens of Klay Thompson and his deep-launching Golden State Warriors teammates, but also discusses the 2015 research of Joshua Miller and Adam Sanjurjo, claiming a "substantial" hot-hand effect in the NBA All-Star three-point shooting contest.

In addition, Tom Gilovich, lead author on the 1985 study claiming no support for a hot hand, shares his thoughts in the ESPN article on how the Miller-Sanjurjo research may (or may not) have revolutionized how we should think about hot-hand effects. Gilovich, a longtime Cornell University psychology professor, notes that he has shared the Miller-Sanjurjo research with some Cornell mathematicians and that, "People with tremendous math skills are all over the map on this one."

My own take on the Miller-Sanjurjo research, from back in 2015, is available here. Be sure to see Miller's comments on my piece and my reply.

One side note on today's ESPN.com article is that, where author Tom Haberstroh alludes to the fact that, "The legendary Bobby Knight wasn't a fan of the so-called fallacy [claimed by Gilovich and colleagues], either," the embedded hyperlink leads to my book!

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As I note at the top of the blog, nearly all of my recent tracking of sports streaks has taken place via my Twitter feed, rather than this blog. My last blog posting before today, in fact, was all the way back on February 13. Just to update things, here are a couple of prominent hot-hand developments of the past four months:

• As virtually all readers of this blog would know, the UConn women's basketball team had its latest gargantuan winning streak, one that had reached 111 games, snapped in the Final Four national semifinals by Mississippi State. Shortly afterward, I tweeted a graphic I created to show how Mississippi State milked the shot-clock to shorten the game against UConn.
• Back in April, Guy Molyneux wrote in to Andrew Gelman's blog, arguing that, "the hot hand likely has a negligible impact on game outcomes." In the comments section below Molyneux's piece, Miller and several other discussants debate the argument.

The University of Connecticut women's basketball team goes for its 100th straight win tonight, hosting South Carolina in a nonconference match-up. The 100-game mark seems mainly about symbolism, as the Huskies have already had a 90-game winning streak (snapped in 2010) and a 70-game victory stretch (ended in 2003). The John Wooden-coached UCLA men's basketball program pulled off an 88-game winning streak, which ended in 1974.

The following chart shows UConn's margin of victory in its last 99 games (arranged chronologically from left to right). Exact margins are shown up to 40 points, but if the Huskies won by more than 40, there's just a ">40" box on top. You can click on the graphic to enlarge it.

UConn used to be in the Big East, along with, at various times, such top women's hoop programs as Villanova, Notre Dame, and Louisville. However, after the big conference-realignment shake-out of the 2010s, the Huskies ended up in the American Athletic Conference (AAC), which at the moment doesn't have any real competitors for UConn.



As seen in the light-blue columns above, UConn has won every AAC game (regular-season and conference-tournament), except two, by 20 or more points (games 51 and 31 in this list). The Huskies have won nearly 40 AAC games by 40 or more points. (Game 86, vs. Nebraska, has a typo; it should be 84-41.)

The royal-blue columns represent nonconference games (both in the regular season and in the NCAA tournament). To UConn's credit, it schedules many games against elite nonconference opposition, including Tennessee (until 2007), Notre Dame, Duke, Baylor, Maryland, Florida State, and tonight's opponent, South Carolina (curently ranked No. 6 in the nation). As can be seen, the heights of the royal-blue bars are much lower than the light-blue ones. In fact, twice this season UConn won by two and six points, against Florida State and Maryland, respectively.

The early 1970s UCLA men had a lot more close calls during its 88-game winning streak. According to this retrospective article, “Two games were one-point victories. Three more were by two points.” Another 11 wins by 4-9 points. Of course, the college game had neither a shot-clock nor a three-point shot at that time, Teams could hold the ball on UCLA and the lack of a three would have kept the scoring down.*

Tonight, in the nation's capital, the Columbus Blue Jackets will try to tie the NHL record of 17 straight wins, held by the 1992-93 Pittsburgh Penguins. Here's a chronicle of how the team's 16 wins have unfolded. Many articles have appeared on the Blue Jackets' streak, from analytic (here, here, and here), and even Bayesian statistical perspectives. I was interviewed in this SB Nation article.

Two main issues stand out to me. One, which the SB Nation writer discussed with me but didn't make it into the article, is the likelihood of a team with the Blue Jackets', shall we say, non-illustrious history going on such a long winning streak. As I wrote in my book Hot Hand, "many of the most famous streaks... have been compiled by athletes and teams who are among the all-time greats in their respective sports" (p. 5). Examples cited include Kobe Bryant, Joe DiMaggio, and Tiger Woods. As the late Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould once wrote, "Long streaks always are, and must be, a matter of extraordinary luck imposed upon great skill."

The Blue Jackets hardly seem to be the kind of winning franchise, upon which only a little luck would have to be added to produce a long string of victories. Columbus has made only two playoff appearances in the 16 years of franchise history, most recently in 2013-14. At the risk of overstatement, a Blue Jackets' winning streak would be like hearing that a run of 50 consecutive made free throws belonged to Shaq O'Neal rather than Steph Curry.*

The second issue, pertaining to on-the-rink statistics, involves shots on goal. Because goals are rare in hockey, analysts typically focus instead on teams' shot-on-goal totals, which turn out to be a good measure of puck possession (see the new book Stat Shot: The Ultimate Guide to Hockey Analytics , by Rob Vollman and colleagues, for further discussion).

As shown here, in games before the streak, Columbus and its opponents were each taking roughly 50% of the shots (see the columns marked Corsi, Fenwick, and Shots For). During the streak, in contrast, the Blue Jackets have around 54% of the shots in their games and their opponents, 46%. Aggregate shot totals can be misleading, however, because of score effects, the phenomenon of a trailing team bombarding the opposing net with desperation shots in an attempt to get back in the game.

I created the following graphic to take game context into account. Using a puck image for each game during the Columbus winning streak, I plotted the Blue Jackets' deficit or lead on the scoreboard on the x-axis (from losing by 2 to winning by 4). On the y-axis, we see differences between the Blue Jackets' and opponents' actual numbers of third-period shots (which may be more intuitive to grasp than the percentage of total shots attributable to each team). The puck in the upper-left corner of the graph, for example, represents the Blue Jackets' December 3 game at Arizona, the third game in Columbus's streak. The Jackets trailed 2-1 after two periods (the only game during the streak in which they entered the third period trailing), but in a feverish attempt to tie the game (which Columbus did with 2:16 remaining), outshot the Coyotes 23-4 in the third (+19). Columbus eventually won 3-2 via shootout.

If a game is close (i.e., tied or within one goal either way) heading into the third period, we should find Columbus dominating the shots-on-goal totals in the third period during the winning streak. If the Blue Jackets are relatively comfortably ahead, on the other hand, we would expect their opponents to be dominating the shots. This is exactly what we find.


For those with some statistical training, the correlation between size of Columbus's lead on the scoreboard (with a deficit scored with a negative sign) and their edge or deficit in third-period shots was a statistically significant (r = -.58; see blade of the hockey stick in the graphic). The less favorable the Blue Jackets' situation after two periods (trailing or tied), the more they outshot their opponents.

So, if you're a Blue Jackets fan or simply like to see long streaks, don't worry if Columbus is not leading after the second period. In that event, a Blue Jacket barrage on the Capitals' net seems almost certain!

UPDATE: It was not to be for the Blue Jackets, as the Washington Capitals routed them 5-0, ending Columbus's winning streak at 16 games.

As most NBA fans have probably heard by now, the Cleveland Cavaliers' Kevin Love scored 34 points in the first quarter last night in leading his team to a 137-125 victory over visiting Portland. It was a record for most points in the first quarter, but not for any quarter.

Golden State's Klay Thompson once scored 37 points in the third quarter of a game. Although Love's single-quarter point total last night (34) approached Thompson's record, Thompson's is truly one of a kind, in my view, for another reason. Whereas Love missed a few shots last night in the first quarter, going 3-of-4 on two-point attempts, 8-of-10 on shots from behind the arc, and 4-of-4 on free-throws, Thompson didn't miss a single shot of any kind in his big quarter.

Love's 8-of-10 performance on first-quarter threes is nothing to sneeze at, however, and it is the aspect of his record night that I'd like to focus on. Love is a career .363 three-point shooter in a little over eight years in the NBA and his season-specific three-point shooting-percentages have been very consistent in recent years (.376 in 2013-14; .367 in 2014-15; .360 in 2015-16). Thus far in the current season, before last night's game, Love was hitting on .316 (18-of-57) of his treys.

Using Love's career .363 baseline success-rate, we can ask what is the probability that he would make 8 (or more) three-pointers in a 10-attempt sequence. Using a binomial calculator, the answer is .006 or 6-in-1,000.

In one sense, Love's scoring outburst might be considered more impressive than Thompson's. Compared to Thompson's .417 career NBA three-point shooting-percentage (and .444 for the season coming into his record-setting game), Love's career and season-to-date baseline success-rates were several percentage-points lower. It is, of course, harder for someone with a lower baseline success-rate to enter a stretch of hitting at a torrid pace.

Love scored only 6 more points after the first quarter last night, finishing with 40. Cleveland led comfortably for most of the game, entering the fourth quarter up 112-92, so was able to rest its starters.

With the opening ceremonies for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics getting underway tomorrow, swimming enthusiasts are anticipating whether -- and to what degree -- Michael Phelps will be able to extend his career-total medal haul. He currently owns 22 Olympic medals, 18 gold, 2 silver, and 2 bronze.

In terms of Olympic streaks, Phelps has ongoing runs of three straight golds in the 100-meter butterfly and the 200-meter individual medley. He will attempt to extend each of these streaks to four in a row. Before Phelps won the two aforementioned events in 2012, no male swimmer had won the same event at more than two straight Olympiad. He will swim a third individual event in Rio, namely the 200 butterfly, in which he narrowly missed a third straight gold in 2012.

The following chart (which you can click to enlarge) shows Phelps's medal performances not just at the past three Olympiad, but also at the World Championships and Pan-Pacific Championships. The chart includes only the three individual events he will swim in Rio. Phelps did not compete in 2013 due to his brief retirement, plus USA Swimming kept him off the team for the 2015 Worlds for his drunk-driving offenses.


Sports Illustrated's pre-Olympic issue picks Phelps to win one gold -- in the 100-meter butterfly, just ahead of Hungary's Laszlo Cseh. Within 2016, Cseh (50.86) has actually swum this race faster than Phelps (51.00), but we don't know that all circumstances (e.g., amount of rest; pool conditions) were comparable. (You can look up the world rankings in any event, based on fastest times, at the international federation's website.) SI tabs Cseh over Phelps in the 200 fly, and Japan's Kosuke Hagino over Phelps in the 200 IM.

Perhaps it’s the Cubs’ historical futility – anyone can have an off-century, paraphrasing former manager Tom Trebelhorn. Or perhaps it’s the reputations of current team executive Theo Epstein and manager Joe Maddon. Whatever the reason, the team’s fast start this season inspired no shortage of superlatives from the media.

On May 15, with the Cubs sitting at 27-9, CBS Sports.com splashed around words such as “historic,” “remarkable,” and “incredible” in describing the team’s start.

On June 7, with the Cubs having advanced their record to 40-16 the night before, FiveThirtyEight made the stunning comparison of Maddon’s bunch to the 1927 Yankees.

Now, as the season resumes Friday after the All-Star Break, the Northsiders are 53-35. The team’s record has been 26-26 since the CBS Sports article and 13-19 since FiveThirtyEight’s piece.

The Cubs’ slide began on June 20, the opening day of a three-game Wrigley Field series with St. Louis, which the Cardinals swept. Chicago has now lost five of its last six series (plus a one-game make-up game with Atlanta). Using the Cubs’ game-by-game log, I plotted the results of all of their series so far this season, in chronological order. Opponents are shown on the horizontal axis and the outcome of each series is shown on the vertical axis (sweeping a three-game series would be +3, getting swept four would be -4, etc.; see legend below the graph). You may click on the graphics to enlarge them.


[Legend: On the vertical axis, +4, +3, -3, and -4 represent sweeps of 4- or 3-game series; +2 or -2 can result from sweeps of 2-game series or winning or losing 3 in a 4-game series; 0 = split of 2- or 4-game series. The number of games in a series is shown in parentheses after the opponent’s name on the horizontal axis. Asterisk (*) indicates series with 1-game rain postponement until later in season.] ___________________________________________________________________________

Presumably, the Cubs have declined in one or more of the following areas: hitting, pitching, and defense. Hitting does not seem to be the major problem. The team’s two leaders in OPS (On-base Plus Slugging percentages), Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant, have maintained a torrid pace. In fact, Rizzo’s two best monthly OPS figures have come in June (1.211) and July (1.178). The same is true for Bryant (June, 1.058; July, 1.222). Addison Russell and Jason Heyward have been steady, if unspectacular, with monthly OPS values in the .700-.800 range of late. That’s not to say that nobody has slumped. Dexter Fowler’s OPS in April, May, and June fell respectively from 1.087 to .879 to .605, and Ben Zobrist has fallen to an OPS of .707 in June and .640 in July, after he had attained a 1.136 in May. Still, there is no universal collapse in hitting among the Cubs.

To evaluate starting pitchers’ individual outings, I use the “game score” statistic developed by Bill James. The scoring system starts a pitcher out with 50 points, then adds points for good pitcher outcomes (e.g., 1 point for each out, plus an additional point for a strikeout) and subtracts points for bad outcomes (-2 for each hit allowed, -4 for each earned-run yielded). Game scores for each and every start by a given pitcher are included among ESPN.com’s pitching statistics. I have plotted game scores for each of the Cubs’ five regular starters, shown in chronological order.


Although the data are noisy, the general trend is that Cubs starters – four of whom are age 30 and older – began declining around their 15th starts. Before that, most outings were in the 50-80 range (highlighted in gray), meaning that pitchers made a net gain in points above the 50 with which they automatically started.

John Lackey recorded a 23 in his 15th start (a 9-6 Cubs loss at Miami), Jason Hammel struggled badly with a 5 in his 16th start (a 10-2 loss at the Mets), and Jon Lester also registered a 5; this came in his 17th start, another blow-out loss (14-3) at Citi Field. Jake Arrieta, though not hitting the low points of some of his teammates, has thrown clearly subpar games in his last three starts (game scores of 38, 38, and 35). Kyle Hendricks has been the even-keel starter, never deviating from a range of 41-80.

According to another FiveThirtyEight article, as of June 19 (right before the Cubs’ spate of losing series), Chicago pitchers appeared to be benefiting from two developments: their “contact-management skills” or “tendency to allow batted balls that do less damage;” and excellent defensive play from the fielders. Getting into the physics of batted balls, “Cubs pitchers [had] depressed exit velocity by 0.4 miles per hour and launch angle by almost 2 degrees, relative to average.” In terms of fielding, free-agent acquisition Heyward has saved 35 runs with his defense in 2015 and 2016 combined, according to one estimate, which is one of the best performances for an outfielder during this time.

One would guess Cub pitchers lately were allowing balls to leave opposing bats with greater exit velocity and launch angle, although I do not have updated statistics on those parameters. The Cubs need some rest, according to Maddon. That’s as good a recommendation as any, especially for the starting pitchers.

Serena Williams continues to defy the age curve, winning the Wimbledon women's singles title earlier today. At 34 years old (born September 26, 1981), Williams is now the oldest player, woman or man, to win a Wimbledon singles championship, overtaking Martina Navratilova (33 years, 8 months when she captured her final title in 1990). Accordingly, I have updated the age chart of women's tennis greats that I have displayed on this site from time to time.

As I wrote about in my book Hot Hand, maintaining some types of streaks is more pressure-packed than maintaining others. In baseball, a streak of getting at least one hit per game, while not an easy task, still allows a batter to make one or more outs per game and still potentially preserve the streak. A streak of getting hits in numerous consecutive at-bats, on the other hand, has no margin for error. You make an out and the streak is over.

As I further noted in the book (page 5), the Major League record for most consecutive at-bats getting a hit each time is 12, co-held by Mike "Pinky" Higgins (1938) and Walt Dropo (1952). Think of that: 12 straight hits without making an out! (Because walks and certain other outcomes do not count as official at-bats, players could have walked during their streaks.)

Shortly after my book came out, Trent McCotter, a leading authority on baseball records and old-time hitting streaks, e-mailed me that, "You can also add Johnny Kling, 1902, to that list [with Higgins and Dropo]. I discovered it a few years back." Trent informed me that the famous Elias Sports Bureau accepted this change, and indeed, recent versions of the Elias record book list Kling with Higgins and Dropo.

I saved Trent's message for the next time I wrote about hit streaks in consecutive at-bats, not exactly knowing when that might be. A few months ago, the topic returned, and I have waited until the start of the new baseball season to write about it.

While browsing in a used record/CD/DVD store, which also had a small section on baseball cards, I came upon a Walt Dropo card, which I promptly purchased. (You may click on the following photo to enlarge it.)



Though Dropo's big league career lasted from 1949-1961, the card was issued in 1990, as part of the "Swell" Baseball Greats retrospective series.

The most recent threat to Kling, Higgins, and Dropo's mark that I could find was a stretch in 2002 by the Yankees' Bernie Williams, during which he produced hits in 11 consecutive at-bats.

As of a few days ago, I had never heard of Trevor Story, a 23-year-old rookie shortstop for the Colorado Rockies. With so much else going on in the sports world such as March Madness, the Masters, and the Warriors' quest for 73 wins, I just wasn't following the start of the MLB season that closely.

Something has happened in the young baseball season, however, to make a streaks aficionado such as myself take notice. Namely, Story hit two home runs last Monday in his first-ever major-league game and he's maintained a streak of homering at least once in all four of the Rockies' games! I've created the following chart (which you can click to enlarge) to document all of Story's plate-appearances so far this season. (Each game appears on a new line. The numbers after ground-outs [G] and fly-outs [F] are standard fielding position numbers and other abbreviations are explained at the bottom of the chart.)


As this article from last night's game documents, "Story became the first major leaguer to homer in each of his first four games."

Another article notes that, even throwing non-rookies into the mix, Story is just the "[f]ifth player to homer in four straight games to start a season, joining Baltimore Orioles' Chris Davis (2013), Texas' Nelson Cruz (2011), St. Louis' Mark McGwire (1998) and San Francisco's Willie Mays (1971)." Pretty good company!

As the above chart reveals, Story has entered the big leagues as a free-swinger. He has no walks in his first 19 plate appearances. In addition to his six home runs, he has four strikeouts (three swinging), seven fly-outs (which includes line-drives), one ground-out, and one single.

The Rockies host the Padres again tonight, with the Colorado rookie trying to homer in his fifth straight game. We'll continue to follow the story...

UPDATE -- END OF STORY: No home run for Story on Saturday night, ending his streak.

With the men's NCAA basketball Final Four getting underway tomorrow, the player getting the most attention is Oklahoma's Buddy Hield. His Sooner squad will face Villanova, with North Carolina and Syracuse meeting in the other semifinal.

Hield has been a rare entity this season -- an actual streaky shooter -- going through sizable stretches of hot shooting, as well as of more mediocre marksmanship. In each of OU's final five non-conference games (from December 12-25), Hield shot .500 or better on threes, with at least five attempts in each contest (game-by-game log).

The first graph below shows Hield's game-by-game success from behind the three-point arc beginning with the start of Big 12 conference play (you can click on the graphics to enlarge them). After a rough outing at Iowa State in the opener (2-of-9), the senior guard went on a tear of eight straight games shooting .500 or better from long distance (the sizes of the basketball icons are proportional to the number of shots taken in each game, and the opponents are indicated by two-letter abbreviations, which is all I could fit in).* At roughly the midpoint of conference play, Hield's hot shooting was bringing him a lot of media attention.


Hield cooled down during the latter part of Big 12 play, however, shooting in the .300s on treys in seven of OU's last 10 regular-season games (and never higher than .462 during this span). The Big 12 tournament did go well either for Hield, as he shot .333 (2-of-6) in a win over Iowa State and .167 (1-of-6) in a loss to West Virginia.

Once NCAA-tournament action got underway, Hield began to reverse his regular-season slump. In OU's first game, against Cal State Bakersfield (abbreviated as "BK" on the horizontal axis), Hield hit 50% of his three-pointers (3-of-6), his first time at the break-even point in his last 13 games. A .429 (6-of-14) outing against VCU was solid, if not spectacular. Then, after regressing to .286 (2-of-7) vs. Texas A&M, Hield broke out with a .615 (8-of-13) performance from downtown in the Sooners' regional-final rout of Oregon.

Hield's March Madness upturn has involved only a few games, however, so whether or not he's really "back" remains open to debate. Using the statistical technique of local (or "loess") regression to discern larger trends, the results are inconclusive. If the analysis is specified to be highly sensitive or reactive to changes occurring over small numbers of games (left graph, below), there does appear to be a modest NCAA-tournament rise for Hield. However, if the analysis is programmed to less sensitivity and reactivity, and greater smoothness (right graph), no recent rise is detectable


So whether Hield has regained his yield is unclear. Until tomorrow...

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*For fans of the Big 12, the abbreviations should be interpretable, albeit odd (e.g., "TC" instead of TCU, "KS" for Kansas State). In the midst of conference play, Oklahoma took on LSU ("LS") in the Big 12/SEC Challenge. In the NCAA tournament, BK = Cal State Bakersfield, VC = Virginia Commonwealth, AM = Texas A&M, and OR = Oregon.

With the annual NCAA men's basketball tournament getting underway, I wanted to apply a measure I originally developed for the Golden State Warriors, namely offensive "explosiveness," to the leading teams in March Madness.

Reuters news-agency blogger Chris Taylor contacted me a week ago, as part of his investigation of statistical tools that might inform March Madness predictions. I told him about explosiveness, which he included among his "Seven tips for crunching March Madness math." As Taylor characterized my explanation of why one might want to study explosiveness, "Winning teams need to be able to come back from behind, or pull away [in] close games." It remains to be seen whether explosiveness has any predictive power in this year's NCAA tourney. However, as I told Taylor somewhat flippantly, "It seems to work for Golden State!" In the remainder of this posting, I discuss explosiveness in greater detail.

The explosiveness statistic measures high-scoring bursts in short stretches of time. Instead of looking at 12-minute quarters in the NBA, I looked at 6-minute "eighths" of games. An explosive burst in NBA play is defined as scoring 18 or more points in 6 minutes (3 points per minute), which if maintained over an entire 48-minute game would yield a whopping 144 points. In the Warriors' first 25 games of the present season, in nearly one-fourth of all their 6-minute blocks did they register an explosive burst.

For the 40-minute length of college-basketball games, I looked at 5-minute blocks (one-eighth of regulation game-length) to see how often teams scored 15 or more points (i.e., 3 points per minute). Due to time constraints, I analyzed only the top eight projected teams in the field (i.e., all the No. 1 and 2 seeds in the bracket) and looked only at each of these teams' final 10 regular-season games. I did not include overtime periods, so each team had a total of 80 5-minute blocks. As shown in the following table (on which you can click to enlarge), the eight teams varied greatly in their explosiveness.


As can be seen, Xavier (Ohio), the No. 2 seed in the East region, was the most explosive team among those studied. Playing in the Big East Conference, the Musketeers recorded 13 explosive (15-point or more) bursts in their 80 5-minute blocks. Here are several examples:

• In one game alone, vs. Creighton on March 5, the Musketeers pulled off three bursts (play-by-play sheet). Xavier went from having 44 points at halftime to 60 points with 15:00 min remaining; from 66 points with 10:00 left to 82 with 5:00 to go; and 82 with 5:00 left to 98 points at the end.
• At Seton Hall on February 28, a game in which the Musketeers trailed 45-26 at the half and ultimately lost 90-81, Xavier rallied feverishly in the second half. XU went from 43 points with 10:00 left to 58 with 5:00 left; and from 58 with 5:00 left to 81 at the final buzzer, a 23-point super-explosion (play-by-play).

Last Friday, ESPN.com ran a piece documenting the best 100-game stretches in U.S. college sports and major pro leagues such as the NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLB. At the time the article appeared, the University of Connecticut (UConn) women's basketball program had won 99 of its last 100 games (now 101 of its last 102). The legendary UCLA men's basketball program under coach John Wooden also had recorded a 99-1 stretch, from 1971-74.

The UConn women under coach Geno Auriemma have been dominant since winning the first of their 10 NCAA national times (and compiling the first of their five undefeated seasons) in 1995. I, therefore, wanted to look at the Huskies' long-term success beyond their past 100 games.

I decided to examine UConn's last 400 games, representing roughly the past decade of play. The Huskies' past 400 games span from the opening game of the 2005-06 season all the way to last night, when UConn routed Central Florida, 106-51. In these games, the Huskies are 377-23 (.942).

This record appears more compelling, in my view, when viewed in graphic form. I've thus created a diagram that shows 400 dots (one for each game), with wins depicted in blue and losses in red. The games are arranged in chronological sequence, from the first contest in the upper-left corner, advancing across each row of dots, until the 400th game in the lower-right corner. Here's the diagram:

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

As part of the NBA's package of Christmas telecasts, the champion Golden State Warriors (27-1) will host Cleveland (19-7) in a rematch of last season's finals. The Warriors have been the big story of the 2015-16 season, starting out 24-0 (a 28-game regular-season winning streak if one includes the last four games of the previous season) to threaten the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers' record 33-game winning streak. After a December 12 loss at Milwaukee to end the streak, Golden State has won three in a row.

On this holiday occasion, I'd like to look back on the Warriors' winning streak, using an unusual lens. Offense is the team's forte, as seen in the NBA team-scoring rankings. Some basketball analysts look at statistics such as teams’ points per game or points per 100 possessions. To understand the Golden State Warriors’ success over the past season and a half, in my view, we have to look at smaller segments of play. Not halves, not quarters, but six-minute “eighths” of games. When the first-quarter clock runs down from 12:00 to 6:01, that would be the first eighth; from 6:00 to 0:00, the second. The eighth and final eighth would run from 6:00 to 0:00 of the fourth quarter.

In the 2015 playoffs, the Warriors played 21 games and thus 168 eighths of basketball (overtimes are not counted within my analyses). In 22 of these 168 eighths (13%), Golden State scored 18 or more points, which translates into 3 or more points per minute. If a team maintained a 3-points/minute pace for a full 48-minute game, it would score 144 points. Thus, I use 18+ point eighths as a marker of offensive explosiveness. The 22 eighths in which the Dubs scored 18+ points during these playoffs included three of 24 points (4 points per minute) and one of 25 points.

Through the Warriors’ first 25 games of the 2015-16 season – 24 wins followed by a loss – they have recorded 46 eighths of 18+ points in the 200 eighths they’ve played (23%). (Given that opposition is stronger in the playoffs than in the regular season, it’s not surprising that Golden State’s percentage of eighths with 18+ points is higher in the latter.)

The Warriors’ best eighth of the current season, as far as I can tell, occurred in the last six minutes of the first quarter on December 8 at Indiana. After scoring 17 points in the first 6:00 of the quarter, the Dubs added 27 points in the latter half of the first quarter (the second eighth of the game). This explosion included four treys (plus Klay Thompson making all three free throws after being fouled behind the arc).

After the Warriors’ 114-98 win at Brooklyn to go 22-0, acting coach Luke Walton was quoted as saying that, "It's one of our biggest strengths, is that we're never out of a game and we're always one little run away from putting a game away."

The following graph plots Golden State's points scored in the final 6:00 (the eighth eighth) of their first 25 games this season, as a function the number of points by which they were leading or trailing with 6:00 minutes left in regulation, We see that the Warriors’ greatest scoring outbursts in the final eighth have occurred when they have trailed or been tied heading into them. (For those with some statistical training, the correlation between Warriors’ margin entering the final eighth and their points scored in the final eighth is r = -.52, p < .01.)


In some ways, this finding is totally intuitive. Trailing or being tied should motivate a team (especially one, such as the Warriors, who were trying to maintain a long winning streak) to play extra hard; conversely, when a team is way ahead, it likely will put reserves in the game and run time off the clock, both resulting in lower offensive output. In another way, however, the finding is not so intuitive. If you’re trailing or tied late in the game, it could mean you are playing a tough opponent and/or having an off-night, which are not conducive to big scoring runs.

The above graph also shows that failure to respond as expected is what put the Warriors’ winning streak in jeopardy in Game 24 at Boston (a double-overtime Golden State win) and helped end it the next night in Milwaukee. According to the trend-line projection, the Dubs would have been expected to score 17 or 18 points in the final eighth of the Celtics game, but instead scored only 12 (this discrepancy is depicted by the red dashed vertical line). Trailing by 13 at Milwaukee, Golden State would have been expected to put up 20 in the final six minutes, but instead scored only 15.* Given that the Boston and Milwaukee games were the sixth and seventh of a seven-game road trip, the late-game loss of the Warriors’ explosiveness doesn’t seem surprising.

I don’t expect media outlets to replace the standard quarter-based line-score with one organized by eighths. For highly explosive teams such as the Warriors, however, I do believe eighths are a useful lens for statistical analysis.

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*The Warriors lost to Milwaukee by 13 (108-95), so strictly speaking, even if Golden State had scored the extra five points predicted by the correlational analysis, it still would have lost. Had the Warriors shown more offensive prowess in the final 6:00, however, the Bucks might have begun to feel pressure and perhaps the ending would have unfolded differently.

Living members and fans of the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers can rest easy, as that team's 33-game winning streak will remain the NBA record for the foreseeable future. Whether you counted the Golden State Warriors' current win streak at 24 or 28 games (including the last four of the 2014-15 regular season), it doesn't matter. The Warriors' streak is now over, as moments ago, they fell at Milwaukee, 108-95. The Bucks held a double-digit lead for much of the contest. A few times late in the third quarter and early in the fourth, Golden State cut the deficit to three points or fewer, but never could tie the game or take the lead (play-by-play sheet). Playing the final game of a seven-game road-trip, just one night after a double-overtime win in Boston, the Warriors appeared spent.