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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sports Act. Living

Sec. Elite Sports and Performance Enhancement

Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1657992

This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances in Sports Science: Latest Findings and New Scientific Proposals- Volume IIIView all 21 articles

Positional Contrasts in Key Techniques Between Men and women Basketball at the Olympic Level

Provisionally accepted
  • School of Athletic Performance, Shanghai University of Sport, Shanghai, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

This study aims to identify the key techniques of role players at each position in the Olympic basketball games, contrast the differences in key technique performance between men’s and women’s basketball players at the different positions, and explore the factors that lead to the differences in technique performance. Comprehensive offensive and defensive technique data were systematically recorded across 52 matches during the 2024 Olympic Games. CatBoost algorithm was subsequently implemented to identify key techniques through feature importance analysis. Results showed that the key techniques for men guards were 2PM, 3PM, AST, One-hand Pass, and BLK. The key techniques for women guards were Two-hand Pass, AST, 2PM, 3PM, and ORB. The key techniques for men forwards were Two-hand Pass, 2PM, FTM, 3PM and One-hand Pass. The key techniques for women forwards were 2PM, DRB, Dribble penetration, Two-hand Pass, and One-hand Pass. The key techniques for men’s centers were defensive rebounds DRB, 2PM, One-Hand Pass, AST, and 3PM. The key techniques for women centers were Two-hand Pass, One-hand Pass, FTM, BLK, and DRB. This study suggests that basketball coaches should design different training methods and competition strategies for players in different positions.

Keywords: basketball techniques, player positions, gender differences, ensemble learning, Match analysis

Received: 02 Jul 2025; Accepted: 01 Oct 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Wang and Tan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Jie Wang, 153627313@qq.com

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