  We report an emergence of bifurcation in basketball, a single-particle system
governed by Newtonian mechanics. When shooting the basketball, the obvious
control parameters are the launch speed and the launch angle. We propose to use
the three-dimensional velocity phase-space volume associated with the given
launch parameters to quantify the difficulty of the shooting. The optimal
launch angle that maximizes the associated phase-space volume undergoes a
bifurcation as the launch speed is increased, if the shooter is farther than a
critical distance away from the hoop. Thus, the bifurcation makes it very
important to control the launch speed accurately. If the air resistance is
removed, the bifurcation disappears and the phase-space volume distribution
becomes dispersionless and shrinks in magnitude.
