Does Transition Experience Improve Newcomer Performance? Evidence From the National Basketball Association

A substantial body of research has highlighted the effects of experience on individual performance in groups. However, the challenges individuals confront after moving between groups require the adoption of more finely grained categorizations of experience to understand how they will help or hinder performance in novel group environments. This article develops a distinct form of experience here termed transition experience to deal specifically with insights individuals accumulate as they shift membership between different groups and contrasts its impact with that of the frequently examined component of related task experience. Player movement data from the National Basketball Association is used to show that related task experience can produce negative consequences, consistent with prior research. Conversely, low to moderate levels of transition experience can aid performance. This holds true for both individual performance and performance more closely related to coordinated actions with teammates.