“Icing the shooter” in basketball: The unintended consequences of time-out management when the game is on the line

Abstract

While the sport of basketball is usually characterized by a non-segmented and mostly uninterrupted play, the stoppage of the time due to time-outs (TOs) is widespread when the game is on the line. In the current investigation, we studied the effects of TOs on free-throw performance when NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) games were close and time was winding down (n = 99,026 combined sample). We generally found that time extension before execution undermined performance but not in the last minute of play when performance deteriorated altogether. In line, traditional icing when TOs were called by opposing coaches specifically to undermine performance in the last minute of play failed to exact the intended goal of lowering free-throw performance.