Editorial: Optimizing player health, recovery, and performance in basketball

Basketball is one of the most popular team sports globally, with participation rates ranging from 2 to 5% among adults (aged >18 years), 7–14% among adolescents (aged 13–17 years), and 5–25% among children (aged 5–12 years) in African, American, and Western Pacific regions (Hulteen et al., 2017). This participation rate has grown recently in many countries—for example, 27.1 million people from the United States over 6 years of age participated in basketball in 2021 compared to 22.3 million in 2016 (Statista, 2022). Furthermore, basketball is played across many competitive levels ranging from recreational settings to international tournaments such as the Olympics. In line with this broad appeal and increased participation, the number of journal publications focused on basketball has grown in the past 20 years (Figure 1), placing it second in publication outputs among Olympic team sports (Millet et al., 2021). Consequently, this Research Topic, Optimizing player health, recovery, and performance in basketball, was conceptualized as an outlet for this increased scientific interest to further strengthen the available evidence base for basketball end-users.