Niveles de competitividad en las principales ligas profesionales de baloncesto (ACB y NBA) y en la principal liga amateur americana (NCAA)

The level of uncertainty in the fi nal standings is closely related to the attractiveness of the league. The competitive balance studies the level of equity among participants. The effectiveness of a team has a reciprocal relationship with the emerging environment: the competition. The competitive model infl uences on the competition. So small changes can signifi cantly alter the fi nal result. Aim: Studying the results of two of the major professional Pagina 18 basketball leagues: NBA (National Basketball Association, USA) and ACB (Association of Basketball Clubs, Spain) and a non-high-level professional league such as the American College League (NCAA Division I). Method: We used the normalized Shannon entropy (Sn) to study the competitiveness of the league and Voronoi diagrams for the analysis of the competitive balance between participating teams in the league. Results: Both the ACB and NBA show a high degree of competitiveness (range 0.9851 to 0.9902), although these periods are more stable in the NBA. The NCAA is affected by the large number of participating teams and the heterogeneous of teams (budgets, players, facilities, etc.) (range. 0.9679-0.9583). These values are quite far from the professional leagues, but despite this fact the NCAA league is the most stable of the three (mean = 0.9631 ± 0.0033 Sn). Conclusion: The more professional a league is, the more uncertainty show. The competition model used determines the balance between participating teams.