A study comparing the skill acquisition of novice performers against that of elite performers in basketball

For this study, I observed a year 7 group of novice basketball players. Many of them had never played basketball before, and some of them had only started playing very recently. I also observed an NBA game, to compare the skills of the two groups. There is a huge difference in all areas of skill acquisition between the two groups of basketball players. The areas of skill acquisition I am going to look at are skill and ability, information processing, memory and decision making. Performance is affected by how well a player can use these different areas, whilst performing.
Firstly I observed the skill levels of both the NBA basketball players and the year seven basketball players. There are seven aspects of skill, so I judged both performances on some of the aspects of skill. The NBA basketball skills were very aesthetically pleasing. For example, when they took a shot, they would put backspin on the ball by flicking their wrist so the ball dropped in the hoop, of the backboard. This looked very good, because the arm and the wrist move together, in a flowing movement. When you compare this to the year 7’s, the technique was not performed in the same way. Most of them did not flick the wrist to generate backspin, and shot more directly at the basket, rather than looping the ball. This made their performance a lot less skilful because the technique looked messy and did not flow. It also meant they made baskets a lot less consistently than the NBA stars because the technique of the NBA basketball players made it a lot more likely for them to score. The NBA stars could also perform much more efficiently than the year 7’s without getting tired. An example of this would be the skill of dribbling. The year 7’s use a lot of energy smashing the ball down with the