Power and agility testing within the NBA pre-draft combine

Abstract

Considering agility is a prerequisite for basketball performance and several agility tests have been used during the pre-draft assessment of the National Basketball Association (NBA), the aimed of this study was to examine the associations between pre-draft athletes´ performance scores in NBA draft combine testing protocol. The performance of 480 athletes invited to the NBA pre-draft assessment from 2010 to 2017 was considered. Tests in the NBA Draft Combine considered in this study included the Shuttle Run Test, Lane Agility Test, Sprint Test, and Jump Test (standing vertical leap). Zero order correlations were calculated to examine the associations between performance tests by fitting Bayesian linear regression models. Among running testing, both Shuttle Run Test [r=0.45, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.34 to 0.56) and Sprint Test (r=0.45, 95% CI 0.37 to 0.54) were moderately associated with the Lane Agility Test. The association between the Sprint Test and Shuttle Run Test was moderate at best (r=0.27, 95% CI 0.16 to 0.38). Correlations between Jump Test and running tests were moderate to large, ranging from-0.51 to-0.19 (Lane Agility Test: r=-0.33, 95% CI-0.42 to-0.24; Shuttle Run Test: r=-0.19, 95% CI-0.31 to-0.07; Sprint Test: r=-0.51, 95% CI-0.59 to-0.43). As a conclusion, we found a moderate to large correlations between the tests performance of the NBA Draft Combine, implying that the overall procedures may provide in part overlapping information about basketball maximal short term performance.