Short-term effects of adding 1-m wide to each side of the basketball court on youth players’ performance

Abstract

This study aimed to identify short-term effects on basketball players’ physical responses, technical performance, and tactical behaviour when the court dimension is increased 1-m wide to each side. Fourteen youth players participated in 5 vs. 5 simulated basketball games, under two different conditions: regular court (28x15m) and wider court (28x17m, 1-m wider for each side). Besides the assessment of physical and technical indicators, positional data were also used to compute the following variables: distance to the nearest opponent, distance to the nearest teammate, stretch-index and distance between centroids. Results indicated that in the wider court condition, the dispersion of player’s displacement trajectories during the offensive phase increased, which had slight repercussions on their physical responses and in the teams’ playing patterns. Conversely, during the defensive phase, players tended to move within the regular spatial references, regardless of court width manipulation. Overall, this study emphasizes that short-term effects of changing the court dimensions are relatively negligible, suggesting that informational constraints might require longer time-scales to yield robust changes in players’ performance.