Motivation and Emotions among Top Players in the Western Balkan Basketball Teams
This study was conducted on the sample of 127 top level basketball players from 11 different teams in three countries from the Western Balkans. Two significant findings were found in this paper. The first one is consisted of six motivational variables (controlled motivation, autonomous motivation, external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation, and intrinsic motivation) out of which four predictor variables were singled out. The multiple regression was used to establish that the variable of identified regulation significantly predetermined the variable of handling relationships. Combined with external regulation, it led to a decrease in efficiency of cooperative and interactive performance of basketball players. The other significant finding was the fact that top basketball players from the Western Balkans differed among themselves in the level of reading and managing emotions. This finding may prove to be useful to managers and coaches as they can apply it through education and interactive workshops in order to establish positive mutual influencing among team members, i.e. to facilitate those with lower levels of managing emotions to be able to learn from the players who possess higher levels of managing emotions and reading emotions as well. Index Terms managing emotions, reading emotions, identified regulation, handling relationships, regulation