The sports competition of the 21st century is about talents and some key characteristics for the athletes include their age, height, and weight. These are important fundamental parameters of basketball athletes.
This study therefore systematically compared the differences in age, height, and weight between Chinese basketball players in the professional league and university leagues and American male basketball players drawn from the National Basketball Association (NBA), National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) and National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) leagues. This is helpful in finding out whether there exist any differences in the basic physical parameters in player characteristics between Chinese and American players.
The study was a retrospective one as it analyzed archived demographic data of players in the Chinese and United States professional and college basketball teams during the 2015/2016 season. The basic physical data included academic year of study in college for Chinese Universities Basketball Association (CUBA), NCAA and NAIA and age, height, weight and field position for all the leagues.
The results showed that there was significant difference between CBA and NBA players in terms of their height and weight, but not age. On the other hand, there was also a gap between the weight and height of players in the CUBA compared to those in the NCAA and NAIA. There is insufficient height between CBA vs NBA, CUBA vs NCAA and NAIA except in the guard position where there is a little advantage with CUBA and CBA. There is a big disadvantage in weight between CBA and NBA, CUBA and NCAA, NAIA.
Conclusions: It is apparent that there were significant differences in age, height and weight between CUBA
(China) on the one hand and NCAA and NAIA (USA) male athletes on the other. However, whereas there were
significant height and weight differences between CBA and NBA players, there was no difference in their
average age.