# Exploring External Peak Demands: The Influence of Contextual Factors on Male Basketball Players
## 4 Discussion  
The aim of this study was to compare the PDs of PL in national-level basketball players, under the influence of different contextual variables such as the playing time (top player, core player, and occasional player), team venue (home, away, or neutral), score outcome (win vs. loss), and match nature (official or non-official). Regarding playing time, the data analysis revealed significant results. Players in the core group reached significantly higher PL peak values compared to athletes who played fewer minutes, both for the 1 min window (\(p<0.05\), ES = 0.28) and the 3 min window (\(p<0.05\), ES = 0.36). This is not the case for the 30 s window (\(p=0.96\), ES = 0.10). As demonstrated, shorter measurement windows might be useful for identifying the highest values in the PDs of basketball players [6], but they may not be as effective for distinguishing between groups. It appears that players in the lowest-playing-time tier (occaional) were not able to reach peak PL demands as high as those in the intermediate tier (core). Similarly, the effect size data showed small differences between the highest-tier players (top), those who play the most minutes, and the occasional players in the 3 min and 1 min windows. However, in this case, the \(p\)-values did not indicate significant differences. Finally, there were no differences between the top and core groups, with slightly higher values for the core group in the 1 min and 3 min windows, and for the top players in the 30 s window. A possible hypothesis to explain these results is that athletes who play fewer minutes may have poorer physical conditioning or inferior athletic skills compared to the other players, resulting in lower performance. However, this difference compared to the other groups is not excessively high, suggesting that other performance-related abilities, such as perceptual, decision-making, or qualitative technical skills, are more of a determinant of a player's performance. As seen in previous studies, basketball performance requires a multifactorial analysis [27]. As observed, the results for the top players' group were slightly lower than those for the core group. As noted in other studies, athletes who play more minutes might be affected by physiological factors related to fatigue [8]. Another possible hypothesis is that higher-level players have better cognitive abilities, which allow them to perform better tactically, making their physical effort more efficient [28]. Various interpretative models have been proposed to analyze performance in team sports, particularly agility. All of these models highlight the importance of physical and coordinative factors such as strength and movement technique [29; 30; 31]. However, authors like [PERSON] et al., [PERSON], and [PERSON] et al. also emphasize other influential factors, such as perceptual ability and decision-making capacity, which significantly affect performance [29; 30; 31]. According to [PERSON] et al., since performance does not rely exclusively on physical factors but also on cognitive ones, more effective athletes may be able to execute game actions in a way that is physically more economical, potentially leading to lower peak demands [28]. Our results have differed from those of the study conducted by [PERSON] et al., which found that athletes who played fewer minutes achieved better performance data values in various variables related to external load [8]. However, in the mentioned study, the division was made into two groups instead of three, so the comparison cannot be made accurately.