The aim of this study was to compare the teaching of basketball by means of an understanding methodology and a traditional one with regard to ball control, decision-making and execution in a real game situation in the field of shooting, dribbling and passing. The sample consisted of 24 subjects aged between 8 and 11 years with one year’s experience in basketball, across a control group and an experimental group. To assess performance in a real game situation, we used the protocol developed by French and Thomas (1987). A MANOVA was conducted to check if there were differences between groups and an ANOVA of repeated measures to see if there were changes in the dependent variables after intervention. The understanding education group performed better than the traditional teaching group in the three analysed variables.