The high-level basketball player [Il giocatore di basket di elevato livello]

We have collected, by a multicentric research among the physicians of many Italian First Division Basketball Teams, all biomorphological values of top-level basketball players. From the beginning of the 1995-1996 Season, these tests have been extended to professional basketball players from the Italian Sport Professional Laws (Law for the Medical Service of Professional Sportsmen, published on the Italian Official Bulletin on 28th April, 1995). These rules force all basketball players to undertake many clinical examinations once or twice a year and all results must be collected in an individual clinical record and a medical sheet, which both will follow the athlete during his sport career. The Members of the Association of the Italian Basketball Physicians have collected all the data of 108 professional players, relating to the first medical examination during the preseason training of the 1996-1997 Championship. From these results we can elaborate, with high reliability, the biomorphological profile of the professional basketball player, where we can see that these athletes have lung and heart top level parameters, great muscle mass and good conditions of all body systems, demonstrated by normal hematochemical values. This paper provides only preliminary results, but through a larger number of collected data, we will be able to identify an exact outline of the basketball professional player, also by adding some other physiological and metabolic parameters, actually not requested by the law.