Enhancing team dynamics: Unveiling synergy effects through social network analysis in professional basketball

The objective of this study was to: (1) redefine player roles of Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) players using a clustering model, grounded in offensive and defensive Play Type data; (2) Utilize social network analysis (SNA) to examine the connections and synergy effect between player positions in lineups that demonstrate offensive excellence, defensive excellence, and net rating excellence. The sample gathered included 20 clubs throughout five seasons (2018-2019 to 2022-2023) of the CBA, which included 1813 players and 22,661 samples of lineup data. The clustering results of the study classified CBA players into 19 distinct player roles. Further analysis revealed that: (1) only ten player roles were highly correlated with excellent lineups; (2) the presence of the C6 Core Ball Handler enhanced the performance of most teammates; (3) the C1 Off-Ball Shooter's performance heavily depended on the interaction with the C6 Ball Handler and the C2 Versatile Big; and (4) the C3 Ball Dominant Scorer negatively impacted the performance of all other player roles. These results reveal new insights into players' fingerprints and offer coaches a fresh perspective on team composition.