BAS group
Although playing BAS requires individuals to play in situations with cognitive demands, we were afraid that the few hours per week might not be enough to cause chronic effects if the intervention consisted only in free-game situations (e.g., matches following the sport rules), and there could be a risk that the participants were more focused on the motor demands of execution (e.g., passing, receiving, dribbling), rather than on the tactical demands, which would result in inadequate cognitive stimulation. Thus, the authors considered dividing every session for the BAS group into three blocks: (1) a passing game; (2) the development of individual skills with a direct opponent; and (3) a collective game with specific rules. The order of these three blocks was changed in every session. Participants warmed up for five minutes individually before performing the blocks. Task difficulty increased according to the level of proficiency demonstrated.In the passing game block, the participants were divided into two teams. Each team had a ball, and the game consisted of one team having to use their ball to touch the participant of the other team who has the ball, while the other team has to perform ten passes. The general rules were that the participant with the ball cannot move, so the team had to cooperate and make good passes to achieve the goal, and every time a participant passed, it was mandatory to move to another place, so staying in the same place was forbidden. The difficulty progressively increased over the training period by adding more rules such as not repeating the pass to the same person who did the previous pass, not looking at the person who is going to receive the ball, the type of pass has to be different from the previous one, a reduction in the game space, the presence of a third ball on the floor which the team that is trying not to be tagged must roll with their feet, and the team trying not to be tagged was assigned to wear two different colors and the ball could not be passed to a teammate wearing the same color.The development of individual skills with a direct opponent consisted of tasks in which participants learned individual basketball technical skills (e.g., dribbling, shooting) with an ever-present opponent trying to grab their ball. Specific rules that required them to use their attention capacity included making it progressively more demanding, such as changing the dribbling hand, passing the ball to the instructor when he raised his hand, ending in a shoot in a one-on-one situation if the instructor showed a yellow color and in a lay-up if the card was red. Non-compliance with these rules led to an attacker-defender role change.Respecting the collective game, the specific rules consisted of tasks somewhat similar to official basketball matches but applying task constraints, such as a time possession limit of 10 s, limiting the number of passes, the inclusion of another teammate, and playing in offensive or defensive advantage.Finally, at the end of every session, all of the participants had to report their perceived effort according to the RPE scale.