When it comes to tactical analysis, most of the literature focuses on describing the events taking place on the court; only limited research explores alternative options that players could have done. The article „Modeling the formation of defensive gaps in basketball: Cutting on a teammate’s drive“ by PhD student Bence Supola, Dr. Thomas Hoch and Prof. Arnold Baca aims to narrow this gap by characterizing the defensive formations that allow an offensive player to timely cut to the basket while a teammate is driving.

Using positional data from the NBA, a model was created that detects the possiblities for such a cut in any given moment of a drive. The impacts of the individual features, along with their interactions, led the authors to the conclusion that the observation of two key attributes of defender behavior makes it possible to recognize openings in the defense.

The paper has been published in PLoS One and is available on the following link: journals.plos.org/plosone/article