In basketball special attention should be paid to the athletes’ efforts during the games. The present work investigates games situations as frequency of attack and the timing of execution of the moves of defense, timeouts practiced by high level teams, in 18 games of National League of Male Basktetball – 1999/2000. From observa tional direct delineation, data were collected in standardized instru ment of register, stored in databanks and processed in global terms of the team producing interesting information in the descriptive plan, in tabular and graphical form. The results indicate: i) increased game dynamism in the beginnings and the ends of the matches; ii) bigger variability of the distributions of frequencies of number and duration of the moves of defe n s e, attack and time outs in analysis of the games and the analysis of the quarters of games, where less heterogeneous values are observed in the second and thirds quarters. Data are reviewed with regard to sports sciences finding.

KEY WORDS: basketball; intensity of the effort; foundations