A Cross-sectional Comparative Study of Movement Distances and Speed of the Players and a Ball in Basketball Game

The purposes of this study were: 1) to measure the movement distances and the movement speeds of each player or the ball in a regular basketball game: and 2) to propose effective coaching material about players' physical conditioning through the cross-sectional comparative method of that game performance. Three basketball games were analyzed. They were the xxth All-Japan Inter-High School Basketball Championship women's semifinal (A-high school vs. B-high school in which A-high school won, 74-68), the xxth Western Collegiate Basketball Championship women's consolation match to decide third place (C-college vs. D-college in which C college won, 75-68), and the 200x-x+1 W-League Playoff Final 1st game (E-team vs. F-team in which E-team won, 98-73). In this study, the movement distances/speeds of all the players and the ball were calculated by 3-dimensional photography analysis in which the DLT method was used. Main results were as follows. 1) The average and standard deviation (S.D.) of the movement distance of all players were: high school players, 5587±171 m; college players, 5576±202 m; and WJBL players, 6177±264 m. Moreover, the average and standard deviation of the movement distance per 1 minute were: high school players, 93.4±3.1 m; college players, 100.4±4.1 m; and WJBL players, 94.2±3.5 m. 2) The average and S.D. of the fastest movement speed were: high school players, 7.03±0.51 m/s; college players, 7.41±0.26 m/s; WJBL players, 8.01±0.46 m/s. 3) From calculation of the frequency distribution for the speed ratio to the fastest movement speed, the ratio of the movement intensity in a game was high : middle : low=1 : 4 : 5. These finding revealed although the quantity of motion and movement intensity in the game did not differ much by age, each player's individual capability differed clearly.