Using nutritional supplements is a widespread strategy among basketball players to
ensure the appropriate provision of energy and nutrients to avoid certain complaints. Particularly in
basketball, there is no consensus on the type, quantity or form of use in which these supplements
should be administered. Therefore, the main aim of this systematic review is to highlight the ergonutritional aids that may be effective in basketball. A structured search was carried out following the
Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA®) guidelines in the
Medline/PubMed and Web of Science, Cochrane Library, and Scopus databases until 31 December
2021; no year restriction was applied to the search strategy. There were no filters applied to the
basketball players’ level, gender, race, or age to increase the power of the analysis. The results of this
systematic review have shown that the effective dose of caffeine to enhance anaerobic performance
and the feeling of vigorousness and energy ranges from 3 to 6 mg·kg−1
, showing more positive
effects when is supplemented 60–75 min before exercise in the morning and in test-based task. On
the other hand, vitamin E (ranging from 200 to 268 mg), vitamin D (10,000 IU) and EPA (2 g) may
have a potential role in recovery and wellness. The primary limitation of this study is the scarcity
of studies related to nutritional supplementation in basketball players. However, a major strength
is that this is the first systematic review describing what ergo-nutritional aids may be specifically
helpful for basketball. Despite the need for future studies, certain nutritional supplements may have
promising advantages for basketball (long-term supplementation of nitrates for recovery), whereas
others (β-alanine, sodium bicarbonate, and acute nitrate supplementation) might theoretically be
regarded as not interesting for basketball, or even not recommended by the World Anti-Doping
Agency (WADA) as bovine colostrum.
