In order to determine the difference in some anthropological characteristics between basketball cadets get different qualities on a sample of 20 basketball players competing in the Croatian cadet basketball league, a battery of three morphological measures (body height, body weight and body mass index) and three variables for evaluation functional-motor characteristics (running time of individual sections of a specific test, maximum heart rate during running, minimum heart rate in the break between runs). In addition to the mentioned variables, the chronological age of the respondents was also recorded, as well as their playing experience. After preliminary processing procedures, the differences between the group of basketball players in the applied variables were determined by t-test for independent samples. The differences found in running tests can be attributed to the better anaerobic abilities of better quality basketball players. Differences in heart rate values exist at almost all measured points. Results are expected because the maximum heart rate decreases with increasing chronological age. The acquired knowledge can be applied in planning and programming of transformation procedures of young basketball players, and the determined values of monitoring time and heart rate when performing a specific basketball test can serve as preliminary reference values for basketball cadets.