KINEMATICS IN BASKETBALL SHOOTING - THE INFLUENCES OF BASKET HEIGHT AND BALL SIZE

Abstract

INTRODUCTION The majority of coaches identify shooting as the most important skill of basketball. This does not preclude the importance of other skills - dribbling, passing or footwork - but only assume that all offensive actions have shooting as their final objective. Coaches have many preocupations about the direction of team's development. Some of them revolve around the effort of teaching and developing the basic skills of offence. At the same time young players must, from an early age, practice their skills in a regular context, in similar conditions to the adult basketball game. In these more demanding conditions the successful execution of basic skills of offence actions, have the tendency to become more difficult for young players. The purpose of the present study was to analyse the effects of basket height and ball size on some mechanical parameters of shooting technique. METHODS Ten thirteen years old right-handed basketball players were the subjects in this study. A total of 11 3 shoots were digitised and analysed in a bidimensional software program named BIOSIST. Two kind of kinematics parameters were considered: instant kinematics parameters, determinate on the instant of ball release, and behaviour kinematics parameters, which are relative to shooting time. Two heights of basket and two sizes of ball were used. RESULTS Results point to significant differences in linear velocity of shooting hand and height of same segment on ball release, when regular and adapted conditions of basket height were compared. Ball size seemed to have more influence on displacement of centre of mass, particularly on its horizontal path during shooting time. Despite the small differences obtained on intersegmental angles, for both conditions of basket and ball, the adapted form of these variables promotes a better quality of execution for the players. CONCLUSION More significant than ball size, the tendency of results reveals that the adaptation of basket height could create an execution in which its characteristics are similar to theoretical models used by coaches. REFERENCES Ferreira, A.P.; Fernandes, 0.; Abrantes, J. (1996); Kinematic Analysis of Basketball Shooting. Prellimhar Results; in, 14th International Symposium on Biomechanics in Sports. Ed. by Joiio M.C.S. Abrantes; Edi~dies F.M.H., Universidade Tdcnica de Lisboa; pp. 47 1-474.