Abstract
This study was carried out to investigate the concentration and mental toughness of professional basketball players. A total of 290 professional basketball players aged 16–26 years who played in the Turkish Basketball First and Second Leagues participated in the study. The “Sport Mental Toughness Questionnaire (SMTQ-14)” developed by Sheard et al. (2009) was used to determine mental toughness levels of the basketball players participating in the study, and the “Letter Cancellation Task” scale developed by Kumar and Telles (2009) was used to determine their concentration levels. Data were analyzed by using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, an independent samples t-test, and one-way analyses of variance (ANOVA).Results show that the concentration ability of the basketball players did not significantly differ in terms of gender, age and sports age. There were statistically significant differences in overall mental toughness, confidence and control. The players’ mental toughness and confidence scores differed significantly based on sports age. It is interesting to find that overall mental toughness was higher in the basketball players with a sports age of 1–5 years. According to their positions in the play, the players’ concentration ability was found to be significantly different between guards and pivots in favor of the guards. The concentration ability of the players playing at the guard position was higher than that of the players playing at other positions. Overall mental toughness and its sub-dimensions had no significant differences according to the positions. However, it is striking that overall mental toughness scores and its sub-dimension scores were high in guards and pivots.
Highlights
Basketball is a common sport fondly followed by the vast majority of the world, finding its participants in almost every society and age group
In a study titled ―Mental toughness and emotional intelligence of professional basketball players in terms of different variables,‖ it was found that mental toughness did not differ according to gender; mental toughness was higher in females than in males (Yazıcı, 2016)
There was no significant difference in the concentration ability according to age groups
Summary
Basketball is a common sport fondly followed by the vast majority of the world, finding its participants in almost every society and age group. Based on this work, Cox (2012) has determined the psychological characteristics of elite athletes They may vary depending on the sports branch, they can be listed as follows: suitable personality characteristics; having a controllable inner focus for success and failure; a high level of self-confidence and belief in the ultimate achievement; intrinsic motivation; a strong goal-oriented dominance for athletic success; a full concentration on an existing task; an ability to control emotion and excitement; strong coping skills to cope with difficulties faced; setting challenging goals and having the ability to formulate plans to achieve them; the ability to use self-talk, imagination, self-control and other psychological methods to gain confidence and motivation; and mental toughness
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