Pojskić, H. et al: Differences between successful and unsuccessful… Acta Kinesiologica 3 (2009) 2: 110‐114 110 DI FFERENCES BETWEEN SUCCESSFUL AND UNSUCCESSFUL BASKETBALL TEAMS ON THE FI NAL OLYMPI C TOURNAMENT Haris Pojski ć, Vlatko Šeparovi ć and Edin Uži čanin Faculty of physical education and sport, Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina Original scientific paper Abstract The aim of the study was to find out global quantitative differences between successful and unsuccessful teams, which had played on the Olympic basketball tournament, in twenty two standard and derived statistical indicators of situational efficiency. The research was performed on the sample of 37 matches, so that 74 different statistical samples have been included in analysis. Data were collected by means of statistics patterns provided by official FIBA web site www.fiba.com. A discriminative analysis has been conducted in order to track down possible differences between two groups of the teams. One statistically significant discriminative function has been obtained. The values of canonical correlation are pretty high, which is to say that the 22 statistical parameters make very good difference between successful and unsuccessful teams, but also that there were big differences between the groups. The obtained results show that assists, parameters of shooters’ field goal efficiency, defensive rebound and number of points made by bench players are variables that make the most significant difference between victorious and defeated teams. The reason for big differences between the victorious and defeated national teams that participated on the final Olympic basketball tournament in Beijing is probably because they highly differentiated in technical, tactical and physical conditioning, what is conditioned by participation of various quality national teams that come from different continents and countries, where basketball leagues are not so good. Key words: FIBA statistics, discriminative analysis, team efficiency Introduction Basketball maybe is not the most popular sport in the world, but for sure is one of the most dynamic. It attracts attention, not only of ordinary public and funs, but also scientists and sport experts. During the game, as a result of 24 second rule, there are a lot of defensive and offensive actions that make basketball teams and players to be physically, technically, psychologically and tactically well prepared. Very often a winner is not known till last second of a match, but sometimes, in the other hand, it is very easy to see which team will be more successful only after few minutes of a match. What makes difference between successful and unsuccessful teams was the subject of many studies on different level of competition; from the best basketball league in the world, American NBA, to the countries’ basketball leagues. Previous researches, conducted on elite basketball games by Gómez et al., 2008; urkovi ć et al., 2005; Ibáñez et al., 2008; Karipidis et al., 2001; Pojski ć, 2006, 2007; Šeparovi ć et al., 2007, 2008; Trnini ć et al. 2002, tried to determine which game-related statistical parameters discriminate winning from defeated basketball teams. The other studies carried out in order to find out correlation between some game related parameters and win-loss record. Melnick (2001) tried to find, based on five NBA seasons, a relationship between team assists and team success. The aim of our research was to; based on 22 game-related parameters, determine differences between successful and unsuccessful basketball teams on Olympic tournament in Beijing. We consider the Olympic tournament the best place to see the world top national teams, and therefore the best basketball performance, but also there are some national teams which are usually not good enough and cannot properly resist to other teams. Those teams typically come from Africa and Asia and their participation on Olympic Games aims to promote basketball in their countries, but very often at the expense of low quality matches with domination of one team over other. We wanted to determine are there really big differences between the national teams. That is the reason we chose the game-related statistics from the tournament to find out what discriminate winning from defeated teams on high level basketball matches. Methods The research has been conducted on the sample of 37 matches, so that 74 different statistical samples (the tournament official box scores) have been included in analyzing. Twenty two variables of standard and “derived” statistical indicators of situational efficiency have been analyzed.