Basketball from perspective of nonlinear complex systems

Abstract

We consider basketball as a complex systemic unit. There is areciprocal relationship between the basketball team and its environment. Therefore it is importantto figure out thebehaviorof the participating agents, as well as their relationships. First at all we carried out an approach to the degree of competitiveness of a sport league as complex phenomenon. In thefirst study, we used the results of previous seasons as a way to investigate the victoryprobabilities of each team. We developed a model based on Shannon entropy using two extreme competitive structures, a hierarchical structure and a random structure and applied this model to investigate competitiveness of the NBA (USA) and the ACB (Spain). Both leagues entropy levels are high (NBA mean 0.983; ACB mean 0.980) indicating high competitiveness although entropy of the ACB (from 0.986 to 0.972) demonstrated more seasonal variability than the NBA (from 0.985 to 0.990). Thismethodology has been useful for investigating sports competitiveness.