The study of maturational timing effect in elite portuguese adolescent basketball players: Anthropometric, functional and game performance implications

To estimate age at peak height velocity (APHV) in Portuguese male adolescents and; test the effect of maturational status in physical fitness attributes and individual game performance of U‐14 basketball players. One mixed‐longitudinal cohort with a sample of 439 Portuguese male adolescents and; one cross sectional sample of 172 Portuguese elite U‐14 basketball players. The on-time group was defined within a 1‐year band (more or less) from mean APHV. Preece‐Baines model 1 was adopted to fit the mean stature curve. Independent samples t‐tests and Kruskal‐Wallis tests were performed and effect size (partial eta square) was calculated. The growth fitting revealed an APHV around 13.45 years for Portuguese male adolescents. Early maturing players exceeded significantly their peers in body size and composition, jump power and upper body strength. Early and on‐time maturing players scored better in rebounds won per game (APHV = 13.81, 13.30 years), Performance Index Rating (PIR) and points scored per minute. Maturation influences morphology attributes and strength regardless of the APHV (13.81, 13.45, 13.30 years) used to obtain the cut‐off points. It is recommended to use the new Portuguese mean APHV value to avoid extreme classifying bias groups.