Understanding decision-making in basketball: The irreducible uncertainty of dyadic attacker-defender clashes

We investigated decision-making and interpersonal coordination under constraints, such as posture of the opponent and angular relations of the performers to the scoring target, in basketball. Affordance-based decisions of the attacker, of which side to drive to the basket, depended on feet positioning of the defender, at small interpersonal distances scaled for each dyad. The alignment between the attacker and defender to the basket constrained the decision of the attacker of which side to move past the defender. To succeed, attackers moved quickly in order to increase their relative angle with the defender and basket, while enclosing the interpersonal distance. Dyadic coordination tendencies, expressed by longitudinal and lateral displacements, were also constrained by the relative angle of performers to the basket. Our experimental findings suggested that a continuum of informational constraints, related with the posture of the opponent and angular relations between performers and basket, might have shaped the exploration of emerging possibilities for action at different spatial and temporal scales.