ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Elite Sports and Performance Enhancement
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1658676
Rethinking the Strongest Link: VAL, Ratings, and Team Success in Hungarian Basketball
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Doctoral Studies, Magyar Testnevelesi es Sporttudomanyi Egyetem, Budapest, Hungary
- 2Debreceni Egyetem, Debrecen, Hungary
- 3Magyar Testnevelesi es Sporttudomanyi Egyetem, Budapest, Hungary
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This study evaluates the impact of individual player performance—particularly the VAL rating—on team success in professional basketball. It examines whether basketball operates as a "strong-link" sport, where outcomes depend primarily on top-performing players. A quantitative analysis was conducted on the 2022/2023 Hungarian NB I/A men's league, using 21 offensive and defensive statistical indicators. Data were collected from official league sources and analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics version 28.0. Our findings reveal no significant correlation between individual VAL rankings and team standings. However, offensive and defensive ratings, as well as NET ratings, were strongly associated with team performance, especially among foreign and young players. The VAL metric was more influenced by offensive than defensive performance. Limited playing time and experience may have affected the performance metrics of young players. These results suggest that while basketball reflects strong-link sport characteristics, traditional metrics like VAL may not fully capture a player's contribution to team success. A more comprehensive approach— incorporating both offensive and defensive indicators—could offer a clearer evaluation of player impact. Future research should also explore psychological, tactical, and social factors to better understand individual roles in team performance.
Keywords: game analysis, performance, team sport, Efficiency, competition
Received: 03 Jul 2025; Accepted: 26 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Nagy, Nagy, Nagy, Gáll and Sterbenz. 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: Benedek Ágost Nagy, School of Doctoral Studies, Magyar Testnevelesi es Sporttudomanyi Egyetem, Budapest, Hungary
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