One of your tricks is carb-cycling and mini-starvation. That's fine and good but a basketball player should never ever use the word refeed! When Ray Allen became one of the best shooters in the world he maintained a bodyweight that was in a range of 2-3 pounds. You are not doing this at all! That's fine and good for peaking for competition. What you are doing is done by many high jumpers and long jumpers - they cut carbs and hardly eat and even take diuretics like calcium citrate that don't show up on drug screens for important competitions. Dropping 10 pounds in a week can be the difference between jumping 7'5 and jumping 7'8. This is what you have realized.
I absolutely agree with you that you can't play at your best (or even close to it) when you're doing these tricks. There isnt really a place for it in-season if you care about winning. Doing it to get to a peak is fine but not as a long term strategy even if it's always intended as a temporary one (once i get to X i will stop .. ).
But high jumpers don't constantly do this like you do because it's a terrible state to be in all the time to make long term gains. Figure out what you have learned for peaking and use it sparingly when you get to a dunk contest - cut carbs, cut water, stim out, use hypergravity and jump as high as you can. But you can't exist in that state if you want to be good at basketball. I have done similar things, cut weight, used the weight vest, taken it off and been able to get ridiculous in game dunks at my height.... They are very impressive.. But if I play full court ball with competition in this state I basically run the fast break, play defense, rebound and cut to the hoop for dunks... I don't try to get pretty or do stepbacks and even reverse layups become hard because I don't know my jumping ability well enough to time things...
You can either relegate yourself to being that athletic role player or dedicate yourself to basketball which requires a stable bodyweight (you are saved by not having muscle so you have little glycogen and your refeeds are only a few pounds - if I cut and refeed it can be 20lbs over night...) and a stable level of stimulation... In the long term not being glycogen depleted is what is going to help you lose the female body fat stores, build muscle and become a better player...
I love all those tricks. They're amazing. But they're staying firmly in the toolbox! I wanna see how far i can with just basics. For example right now im not using creatine. Just simple dieting and training hard. Once ive gotten somewhere i feel is decent i will employ the tricks .. but i dont think i am using them right now. When i say a refeed it deosnt mean ive been restricting carbs especially a lot otherwise .. it just means i eat MORE carbs after or during heavy training days. i say heavy to mean active not necessarily weights related. so on a day i lift weights, run sprints, maybe dunk etc i will eat more carbs. That's not a refeed as such in the context of a cyclical lowcarb diet. But im abusing the terminology all the same so i apologise for the confusion...
Right now im getting in shape and adding mass to my body and also getting leaner ... so ive got a good thing going. Will ride it as long as i can. Then peak (use some tricks you mentuioned). I know it's not goign to last, eventually you have to pick and choose one but for now im able to improve several areas simultaneously.
really hoping sprints will help me though..