PONE-D-19-30568

Training Load and Match-Play Demands in Basketball based on Competition Level

PLOS ONE

Dear Mr. Petway,

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ACADEMIC EDITOR COMMENT:

Dear authors, thanks for submitting your work to Plos One. Find reviewer's comments below. Unfortunately, we invited 8 different reviewers but all of them declined to review except one, so the final decision about your work will be based in the sole reviewer that accepted to review, and my own. My sincere apologies for any inconveniences.

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Carlos Balsalobre-Fernández

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: N/A

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Reviewer #1: No

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Reviewer #1: No

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: - English grammar and spellings must be revised before a resubmission of the manuscript due to the fact that too many typos appear through the manuscript. In this sense the reviewer highlighted some of them, but I did not make an extensive review of typos.

- P2, L50, please add into brackets the specific demands (e.g., physical, technical…).

- P2, l52, please replace the term athlete with player through the text.

- P2, L54, please add after competition the different levels analysed (i.e., elite…).

- P2, L54, please write Web of Science instead of WoS.

- P2, l55-57, please replace the numbers (1), (2) and (3) with (i), (ii), (iii).

- P2, L57, please add “and” before (3).

- P2, L58, please clarify the type of study participants: …study participants into elite (xxxxxxx), sub-elite (xxxxxxx), and youth (xxxxxxxxx).

- P2, L59 and L63, add the word systematic before review.

- P2, L60, please write players instead of athlete.

- P2, L61, please write players instead of athlete.

- P2, L61, please write a full stop after athletes and start a new sentence.

- P2, L61, please delete the comma after distance.

- P2, L62, please add “than the other level players” after competition.

- P2, L66, please replace “help determine” with “provide”.

- P3, L82, please delete “of two halves, or”.

- P3, L84, please write “game-related”.

- P3, L91, what does “competition alone” mean? Please clarify the sentence and meaning of Stojanovic´s article.

- Please explain in depth the Stojanovic´s article. This reference detailed some relevant factors that affect the training load in basketball: playing period, playing position, level, geographical location and sex. In fact, the authors should justify why the current systematic review is needed, mainly when the Stojanovic´s one was published in 2017 and only a few articles were published after that date.

- P3, L92, please explain the stress variables identified in the Stojanovic´s review.

- P3, L93, please replace “Of note” with “It is important to note”.

- P3, L95, replace are with were.

- P3, L95, please write fact instead of effect.

- P4, L99-100, please write “…were the variables widely used to assign”.

- P4, L104, please replace conclusive with concluding or robust.

- P4, L106, please write “a better understanding of this…”

- P4, L109, please write …”stress that the players deal with during trainings and competitions”.

- P4, L111, please write “team sport” instead of “sport”.

- P4, L111, please write “…may be of extreme importance to ensure that players are…”.

- P4, L112, please write “…prepared for competition demands, from a fitness standpoint, in order to avoid…”.

- P4, L115, please replace dedicated to with focused on.

- P5, L121, player instead of athlete.

- P5, L123, write loads instead of load.

- P5, L125-126, please rewrite the sentence.

- P5, L127-128. The rationale of the current systematic review should be better presented and justified (as was pointed out above) highlighting the novelty of studying the different level of competition, and what does the current review add to the previous one of Stojanovic et al (2017).

- P5, L132-135, please split it into 2 sentences.

- P5, L132, please write “in the available research”.

- P5, L134-135, please write “Therefore, the aim of the present systematic review was to analyse the evidence related to…”

- P5, L140, please write focused instead of focusing.

- P6, L150, the authors should redo the search due to the fact that the first search was around 8 months ago, and not too many studies were found for sub-elite and youth levels.

- P7, L170, please write 19 years old.

- P7, L172-178, please replace the numbers (1), (2) and (3) with (i), (ii), (iii), (iv).

- P7, L174 and L178, please write and before (3) and (4), respectively.

- P7, L178, please write “a conference proceeding”.

- Quality of figures 1 and 2 must be improved.

- P8, L199, please add “the” before systematic.

- Tables 1 to 5 should include the n of matches and individual observations for each study.

- The units and symbols included in tables 1 to 5 should follow the same scale/unit of measure (m*s). In addition, the description of variables should include in all the studies mean and SD.

- Tables 1 to 5, please unify the names of the leagues to use the correct terminology. For example Spanish ACB league instead of Spanish ACB or what does Spanish Basketball Federation mean? Authors should write clearly each league name or sample used in order to avoid misunderstandings of readers and researchers.

- Results, the authors must unify the way to present the results. I suggest that mean and sd will be provided for all variables. However, the authors did this approach for some variables, but not for all.

- I suggest that the CV% would be included by authors in the analysis of each article to check the variability of their findings. This information will be useful to discuss the importance (stability) of variability among levels and then justify the large differences in some variables.

- P11, L255, please write 4,369.

- P11, L255, please write 3,722 and 6,208.

- P11, L255, please write 5,377.

- P11, L255, please write 7,558.

- P11, L255, please write 4,369.

- P11, L255, please write 5,377 and 7,558.

- P11, L257, please write In particular instead of “Of note”.

- P11, L261-262, please delete “supporting that higher-level players travel the least amount of distance during competition”.

- P11, L262-270. The authors should explain and argue some relevant factors and variables that can justify the level differences such as experience, tactical discipline, hours of training, more professional supervised practice or the control of competition.

- P12, L289, please write In fact instead Of note.

- P13, L319, garner???

- P14, L322, please replace “demonstrated” with identified or found.

- The study of Puente et al (39) should be carefully discussed and argued during results and discussion because only 1 match was studied. Then, some of the authors’ arguments need to be revised to state the limitations of sample size of some studies included in the current review.

- P16, L342, please write correctly the units of running.

- P16, L343, please write sprinting with lower case letters.

- P16, L346, please add that before there was.

- P16, L354, please write these results would instead of this would.

- P16, L355, please delete “at the”.

- P16, L 355, please replace athletes with players.

- P16, L356, please add a full stop after counterparts and clarify the last sentence.

- P16, L359, please clarify that the studies analysed time motion variables or indicators, but not time motion analysis.

- P18, L381-383, please write vs or on when explaining the game situations (e.g., 3 on 3 or 3vs3, but not 3v3).

- P18, L383, please replace games with situations.

- P21, L432, please write correctly the units of measure after >3.5.

- P22, L453-454, please write vs or on for each game situation (e.g., 3 on 3 or 3vs3, but not 3v3).

- P22, L455, please replace athletes with players.

- P22, L461-462, please justify with scientific and valid arguments the training load differences by playing position. The game play actions raised were neither studied nor real facts of the actual game play of basketball.

- P22, L468-475, please discuss these issues with valid and scientific references that support yours statements.

- Limitations, the authors should include more limitations of the current systematic review such as sample size of some studies (Puente et al) or the reduced number of studies for youth players.

- P24, L496, please replace athletes with players.

- Conclusion, L505, please add positional aspects of the sport.

- Conclusion, replace athlete with player L506, L508, L509, L510, L515, L521, and L522.

- P24, L 508, please add to before dictate.

- P24, L509, please add systematic before review.

- P25, L516, wholistic???

- Reference list should be revised in depth according to the journal guidelines: (i) journal title in italics and short title (refs 1-20 and 22-53); (ii) incomplete references without number of pages, article number of journal vol/num (refs 3 and 48); or (iii) wrong journal title ref 45 (Sports medicine instead of Springer) or ref 21.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Miguel A Gómez

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Training Load and Match-Play Demands in Basketball based on Competition Level: A Systematic Review

PONE-D-19-30568R1

Dear Dr. Petway,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements.

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Carlos Balsalobre-Fernández

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: