Incidence and success rates of offensive plays in 3x3 basketball: comparisons by starting actions and age/sex categories

This study compared offensive plays’ incidence and success rates in 3x3 basketball by starting actions and age/sex categories (senior men, senior women, under-18 men, and under-18 women). One hundred and ninety-one games from the FIBA 3x3 Under-18 World Cup 2019 and the FIBA 3x3 World Cup 2019 were analyzed. Offensive plays were classified into three types according to their starting actions: check-ball offensive plays (CBOP), transition offensive plays (TOP), or offensive rebound offensive plays (OROP). Offensive plays resulting in a successful field goal or an earned free throw were considered successful. Pearson’s chi-squared test was used to compare the success rates of offensive plays between starting actions and between categories. The Benjamini-Hochberg method was applied to ensure a significance level of 0.05. Cohen’s w was calculated as an effect size for the chi-squared test. TOP occurred with the highest frequency (55.1-57.5% of the totals) in all four categories, followed by CBOP (28.1-31.2%) and OROP (11.9-14.7%). The success rates of OROP (39.2-49.2%) were significantly higher (p < 0.05, w = 0.07-0.14) than those of TOP (28.5-36.4%) and CBOP (32.1-35.0%) in all categories. Improving the success rate of TOP is crucial to increase the chance of winning a game because TOP accounts for more than half of the total offensive plays. While the incidence of OROP was the lowest among the three offensive plays, the success rate of OROP was higher than that of TOP and CBOP, indicating the importance of acquiring offensive rebounds in 3x3 basketball.