When a Run Feels Inevitable

Basketball fans know the feeling. A game that looked balanced ten minutes ago suddenly seems to tilt. One team strings together a few stops, the crowd grows louder, a shooter pulls up in rhythm, and before long the scoreboard reads 12–2. The announcer says it almost automatically: they’ve got the momentum now.

In real time the phrase feels accurate. The game looks as though it has changed state, as if something invisible has begun pushing events in one direction. Shots fall. Defenders arrive a step late. Possessions unravel. A run gathers a kind of gravity.

But the Scottish philosopher David Hume spent much of his life warning people about precisely this kind of mental move. We watch one event follow another, he argued, and very quickly our minds begin to treat the sequence itself as a causal forceHume argued that causation is never directly observed—we see events following one another and our minds supply the feeling of a necessary connection, but that feeling is a habit of perception, not an observed fact. . We stop noticing the individual causes and begin to speak as if something called momentum has taken over the situation.

Basketball is one of the clearest places where that habit shows itself.

The Pattern That Feels Like a Force

Hume’s basic point is deceptively simple. When we observe the world, we never actually see causation itself. What we see are events: one thing happens, then another thing happens afterward. Over time, as those sequences repeat, our minds begin to expect the second event after the first. The expectation becomes so strong that we start speaking as if a necessary connection exists between them.

The danger lies in forgetting that this sense of necessity comes from our habits of perceptionHabits of perception is Hume’s idea that repeated exposure to sequences of events trains the mind to expect the pattern to continue, creating a subjective sense of certainty that goes beyond what observation alone can justify. rather than from something we directly observe.

A basketball run provides a perfect example. One possession ends in a turnover. The next ends in a transition dunk. Then comes another defensive stop, followed by a corner three. Four or five plays cluster together, and suddenly the arena feels as though a tide has turned.

What we have actually seen, however, is simply a sequence of ordinary basketball events—defensive pressure, hurried shots, transition opportunities, a shooter finding rhythm. The mind gathers those events into a pattern and gives the pattern a name: momentum.

The word is useful, but it can also hide what is really happening.

When the Game Seems to Flip

Few moments illustrate the sensation better than the closing seconds of the 1995 playoff game between the Indiana Pacers and the New York Knicks. With less than twenty seconds left, Indiana trailed by six points. Madison Square Garden had already begun to exhale.

Then Reggie Miller hit a three.

On the inbounds pass he jumped the lane, stole the ball, and immediately hit another three. Seconds later he was at the free‑throw line, sealing a win that moments earlier had looked impossible.

If there were ever a moment that seemed to prove momentum exists, this was it. The arena felt the shift almost instantly. Panic spread across the Knicks’ possessions, while Miller appeared to move through the final seconds with absolute clarity.

Yet the chain of events remains entirely visible. A made three. A rushed inbounds pass. A defensive gamble that succeeded. Another shot falling through the net. Each moment has its own cause. Each decision has its own explanation. The feeling that something larger had seized the game arose from the speed with which those causes appeared one after another.

Hume’s point becomes clear: the run felt like a force, but what we actually witnessed was a cluster of events arriving in quick succession.

The Run That Refuses to End

The same pattern appears in Houston’s famous comeback against San Antonio in 2004. With under a minute remaining, the Rockets trailed by eight points. Tracy McGrady then produced one of the most improbable sequences the sport has ever seen, scoring thirteen points in thirty‑five seconds.

Watching the stretch unfold live, it felt less like a series of possessions and more like an unstoppable surge. Each shot increased the pressure on the Spurs. Each basket seemed to accelerate the next.

But the ingredients of the run are still ordinary basketball causes. Three‑point shots compress score margins quickly. Late‑game fouling increases the number of possessions in a tiny window of time. Defensive mistakes become more likely when teams rush decisions.

The moment becomes legendary because those causes align at extraordinary speed. What looks like inevitability is often just volatility arriving all at once.

The Runs That Repeat

There are, however, situations where the idea of momentum seems harder to dismiss. The Golden State Warriors of the mid‑2010s often produced devastating third‑quarter bursts that felt almost predictable. A close game would reach halftime, adjustments would be made, and within minutes Golden State had built a double‑digit lead.

Yet even here the run emerges from mechanisms that can be described. Defensive stops ignite transition offense. Stephen Curry’s shooting stretches defenders beyond comfortable distances. Klay Thompson’s movement forces constant attention off the ball. Spacing widens. Communication breaks down. Possessions speed up.

What fans call momentum is the visible effect of these feedback loopsA feedback loop occurs when the output of one event becomes the input for the next, creating a self-reinforcing cycle—in basketball, a defensive stop fueling a fast break that energizes the next defensive effort. reinforcing one another. One stop creates a fast break. A made three energizes the defense. Another stop leads to another transition attack. The run builds not because a mystical force has entered the arena but because several small advantages have begun feeding into each other.

The pattern is real. The force we imagine behind it is not.

Belief as a Cause

None of this means the feeling of momentum is meaningless. Hume’s lesson is not that causation disappears, but that we must be careful about where we locate it.

In basketball, belief itself can become one of the causes inside the chain.

Players who sense control often cut harder, defend more aggressively, and shoot without hesitation. Opponents who feel a game slipping away sometimes rush possessions or abandon their normal structure. The crowd grows louder. Communication becomes harder. Small errors begin to compound.

In this way the narrative of momentum can partly create the conditions it seems to describe. A team that believes it has seized control may actually begin to play with greater clarity, while the other side reacts to the pressure. The psychological shift becomes one more link in the causal sequence.

But the chain still consists of identifiable elements—confidence, spacing, pace, defensive pressure—not a mysterious energy hovering over the court.

Seeing the Game More Clearly

The language of momentum will probably never disappear from basketball. The sport is too fast and too emotional for that. Fans need words that capture the feeling of a game turning in front of their eyes.

Hume simply asks us to look more closely at what the word is doing. When we say a team has momentum, we are usually summarizing a cluster of ordinary causes that have begun to reinforce one another. The phrase compresses the complexity of the game into a single dramatic label.

Sometimes that compression is harmless. Sometimes it hides the actual story.

The next time a broadcast declares that momentum has shifted, it can be worth watching the next few possessions with Hume’s caution in mind. Notice the defensive stop that starts the run, the hurried shot that extends it, the spacing that makes the next three possible. What appears to be a sudden force is often just basketball revealing the delicate chain of causes that was already there.

Seen this way, momentum is less a power that enters the game than a pattern our minds are quick to believe in.

---

Footnotes / Philosophy Terms

1. Causal force (Hume) ↩

Hume argued that causation is never directly observed—we see events following one another and our minds supply the feeling of a necessary connection, but that feeling is a habit of perception, not an observed fact.

2. Habits of perception ↩

Habits of perception is Hume’s idea that repeated exposure to sequences of events trains the mind to expect the pattern to continue, creating a subjective sense of certainty that goes beyond what observation alone can justify.

3. Feedback loops ↩

A feedback loop occurs when the output of one event becomes the input for the next, creating a self-reinforcing cycle—in basketball, a defensive stop fueling a fast break that energizes the next defensive effort.