## 3 Results
### Differences between Playing Positions
#### 3.1.3 Speed and Agility  
Many studies aimed to determine whether the sprint performance of basketball players at different positions may differ. Some experts found significant differences in sprinting performance between playing positions [3; 23; 24; 25; 26], while others did not [1; 5]. [PERSON] et al. [24] tested twelve adult male basketball players competing in the Queensland Basketball League and found that backscatter vs. frontcourt players likely possess a superior sprinting ability. [PERSON] et al. [23] reported similar results for female players, i.e., a significant difference was found in sprint performance at different playing positions, most probably due to the differences in body height and body weight that significantly influence the speed of acceleration. This is in line with the study results from [PERSON] et al. [3]: data from 144 elite basketball players support the idea that taller and heavier centers are significantly slower in incremental running, 10 m sprint, and 5 \(\times\) 10 m sprint tests.  
A considerable amount of literature has proved that smaller players perform better not only in sprint but also in agility tests [2; 3; 24; 25; 26]. At the amateur level, it appeared that  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline
**Athletic Abilities** & _Guards_ & _Forwards_ & _Centers_ \\ \hline Anaerobic capacity & higher VO2 peak [1; 2; 3; 4] & \\ \hline Aerobic capacity & & no discriminative factor [5] \\ \hline Speed & faster, higher top speed [3; 23; 24] & \\ \hline Agility * & quicker [2; 3; 4; 25; 26; 27; 28] & \\ \hline Strength & & stronger [5; 23; 24; 25; 27; 29] \\ \hline Normalized strength & & no difference [3; 23; 30] & \\ \hline Jumping ability & best results [23; 31; 32] & \\
**Body parameters** & _Guards_ & _Forwards_ & _Centers_ \\ \hline Anthropometrics * & & taller, more massive [1; 3; 4; 5; 18; 23; 24; 25; 27; 31; 33] \\ \hline \end{tabular}  
* important discriminative factor of the basketball player positions.  
\end{table}
Table 1: Differences in test results, athletic abilities, and body parameters between players in different positions.  
guards are responsible for accelerating the rhythm of the game by having significantly more effective on-court time (\(p<0.01\), \(\mathrm{E^{2}_{R}=0.05}\)) and taking more steps/min (\(p<0.01\), \(\mathrm{E^{2}_{R}=0.28}\)), while centers are mostly involved in competitive actions such as impacts/min (\(p<0.01\), \(\mathrm{E^{2}_{R}=0.20}\)) or jumps/min (\(p<0.01\), \(\mathrm{E^{2}_{R}=0.33}\)) and have better technical performance [34].  
Some [4; 27; 28], but not all [1] studies supported the idea that agility tests might be useful indicators for determining the most appropriate playing position of the athlete. Experts emphasized the importance of agility skills during position specialization [4; 27; 28; 35], including the Agility T-test [4], or the basketball-specific open-skill nonplanned [24] and pre-planned [28; 35] agility tests. The Lane Agility Drill test is one of the most sensitive tests to identify position-specific disparities in the change of direction (COD) performance [27]. Even though frontcourt players seem to possess a quicker COD speed than backcourt players, body height and body mass had a smaller influence on the speed of acyclic and agility movements [23]. In contrast, [PERSON] et al. [1] found no differences between the inner and outer players' 20 m run test (acceleration based on 5 m and 10 m split times) and agility test results.