Injury rate of the Croatian national basketball players

Although regular sports efforts are beneficial for the health of the human organism, they do not exclude the possibility of injuries or damages to the locomotor system in athletes. Sports injuries occur during the training process or during competition, and the knowledge of reasons of their occurrence, as well as the knowledge of specific mechanisms of injuries arc of major importance for prevention. The knowledge of the preconditions and the incidence of injuries as regards the variables, such as the specific characteristics of a sports event, age and gender of athletes, are extremely important to plan the prevention-specific training in the best possible way. The goal of this paper was to determine the injury rate in Croatian national basketball female and male players, the conditions under which they happened, body regions commonly affected, and the position-specific distribution of the injuries.