Originally Posted by
wguan2
This isn't necessarily true because you're comparing apples and oranges. The expected probability of an outcome of flipping a coin is known. 50% of the time you get heads and 50% of the time you get tails. The expected probability for teams shooting or a player shooting is unknown. There lies the difference. So to estimate each shot's predicted probability of a make, you have to use a point estimate. That point estimate comes from season averages or career averages. Once you have this point estimate, then you can compare the two scenarios. If you flip a coin 100 times, your percentages should be about 48-52% while flipping more obviously decreases that range. Same thing with shooting basketball but instead of using 50% as the point estimate, you use their season average or career average. To conclude, while gambler's fallacy is a real thing, it's ironically become very often misused in gambling.