{
  "abstract": "Basketball substitutions are usually interpreted as tactical decisions, but repeated substitution sequences may also reveal stable team-level tendencies in how competitive exposure is organised. We reconstructed 65,657 on-court stints from two complete EuroLeague regular seasons and defined a proposed five-indicator team rotation signature (S5), evaluated over two seasons: structural exposure per minute, fragmentation, rotation irregularity, compressed recovery, and fourth-quarter SEI share. Game-level signatures were identifiable above chance, with leave-one-out nearest-centroid accuracies of 26.7% (95% CI [23.2, 30.0]) and 31.1% (95% CI [27.8, 34.5]) against chance levels of 5.6% and 5.0%, and noisy game-level profiles aggregated into reliable seasonal fingerprints. Across the 17 clubs present in both seasons, matched clubs remained closer to their own previous signature than to randomly paired club-season profiles (mean distance 1.68 vs. 2.62; p < .001). Game state affected rotation depth far more than the signature: a 20-point margin explained 14.33% of within-club variance in effective rotation but 0.80% in signature deviation. Structural consolidation was not detectably associated with winning. However, clubs concentrating structural exposure in the fourth quarter won fewer games (r = −0.38, 95% CI [−0.66, −0.05]); this exploratory association replicated in both seasons but attenuated after controlling for previous-season success and should not be read causally. Rotation architecture therefore behaves as a comparatively persistent club-level property rather than a by-product of in-game substitution decisions.",
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  "affiliations": [
    "Research Center in Sports Sciences, Health Sciences and Human Development (CIDESD), University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD), Vila Real, Portugal",
    "Performance Advisory Board, EuroLeague Players Association (ELPA), Barcelona, Spain",
    "Facultad de Ciencias de la Actividad Física y del Deporte, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain",
    "UCAM, Catholic University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain",
    "Department of Physical Education and Sports, Faculty of Education and Sport, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain"
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      "name": "Jaime Sampaio",
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      "name": "Miguel Ángel Gómez"
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      "name": "Francesco Cuzzolin"
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    {
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        4
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      "name": "Julio Calleja-González"
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  "title": "Beyond minutes played: Rotation architecture as a persistent club-level signature in elite basketball",
  "title_text": "Beyond minutes played: Rotation architecture as a persistent club-level signature in elite basketball",
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  "updated_at": "2026-10-31T12:23:04Z",
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