Basketball is a sport that was created over a century ago in North America. Since then, it has gained popularity and spread to every inhabited continent. While watching a game of basketball, a spectator can enjoy an amazing display of human abilities that allow players to shoot a ball over 23 feet for three points with great accuracy, drive the lane for a layup while bouncing it off the glass and falling out of bounds behind the backboard, and elevate to a height great enough to personally place the ball through the orange hoop with both hands striking the rim and leaving it vibrating.
Talents in basketball vary greatly between players, but a team comes together with five players on the court that specialize in making a basket and guarding their own basket. It has been suggest that players’ physiological characteristics differ according to their position played.1 Players can be categorized into guards, forwards, and centers, each having their own specialty, play style, and game duties. With the varying aspects of the game to which each position is required to excel, reason would point to the different positions being skilled in different areas.
The successful and efficient execution of sprints, abrupt stops, quick changes of movement direction, acceleration, different vertical jumps, fast dribbling, and different shots and passes depend on several motor abilities, one of which is agility.2 Physical fitness is a big determinant of playing time, but more specifically agility, in NCAA Division I basketball players.5
If agility is as important as studies have shown, what are some ways in which coaches or strength coaches can measure agility? Common speed and agility tests are T-test, Zigzag Agility Drill, Agility Run 4 x 15 meters, Long Jump distance, Three Bounds Jump, Shark Time, Speed Get-up, Unconstrained Lunge, Three Minute Celtic Run, Lane Agility Drill, and 505 Agility Test.3,4,6 One assessment not widely used or common in the literature is the JJ Shuttle.
According to the creators of the agility test, the JJ Shuttle requires both anaerobic and aerobic energy sources because of the longer, 60-yard, 4 segment aspect of the run.5 This test may be beneficial to determine how a player’s agility, speed, and acceleration differ between the three playing positions. However, further studies will be needed to determine so.
1 Delextrat, A., & Cohen, D. (2009). Strength, power, speed, and agility of women basketball players according to playing position. Journal of Strength and conditioning Research, 23(7), 1974-1981.
2 Erčulj, F., Blas, M., Čoh, M., & Bračič, M. (2009). Differences in motor abilities of various types of european young elite female basketball players. Kinesiology, 41(2), 203-211.
3 Jakovljevic, S. T., Karalejic, M. S., Pajic, Z. B., Macura, M. M., & Erculj, F. F. (2012). Speed and agility of 12- and 14-year-old elite male basketball players. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 26(9), 2453-2459.
4 McGill, S. M., Anderson, J. T., & Horne, A. D. (2012). Predicting performance and injury resilience from movement quality and fitness scores in a basketball team over 2 years. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 26(7), 1731-1739.
5 Priest, J. W., Jones, J. N., Conger, B., & Marble, D. K. (2011). Performance measures of NCAA baseball tryouts obtained from the new 60-yd run-shuttle. The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 25(10), 2872-2878.
6 Scanlan, A., Humphries, B., Tucker, P. S., & Dalbo, V. (2013). The influence of physical and cognitive factors on reactive agility performance in men basketball players. Journal of Sports Science, 32(4), 367-374.
I have noticed that each player/position has a different set of skills.They are all developed around the same idea but the biggest difference in all of them is their agility. Point guards have the greatest by far, but the agility of each players helps them in their certain position and job on the court.
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