Differences in Physical Demands between Game Quarters and Playing Positions on Professional Basketball Players during Official Competition.

The purpose of this study was to compare physical demands between game quarters and specific playing positions during official basketball competition. Thirteen professional male basketball players from the Spanish 2 Division were monitored across all 17 regular-season home games. Physical demands were analyzed using a local positioning system (WIMU PRO™, Realtrack Systems S.L., Almería, Spain) and included peak velocity, total distance covered, high-speed running (>18 km·h), player load, jumps (>3G), impacts (>8G) and high-intensity accelerations (≥2 m·s) and decelerations (≤-2 m·s). A linear mixed model was used to test statistical significance (p < 0.05) between independent variables. Furthermore, standardized Cohen's effect size (ES) and respective 90% confidence intervals were also calculated. There was an overall decrease in all variables between the first and fourth quarter during competition. Specifically, total distance covered (p < 0.001; ES = -1.31) and player load (p < 0.001; ES = -1.27) showed large effects between the first and last period. Regarding differences between positions, guards presented significant increased values compared to centers (p = 0.04; ES = 0.51), whereas centers achieved significant larger results and moderate effects in comparison to guards in peak velocity (p = 0.01; ES = 0.88) and jumps (p = 0.04; ES = 0.86). In conclusion, physical demands vary between game quarters and playing positions during official competition and these differences should be considered when designing training drills to optimize game performance.