Player Instruction
TRAINING vs GAMES
- Focus on your shooting, dribbling, passing, footwork, and defense
- Get up 1000s of shots while developing mechanics
- Spend hours on skills repetition... and still scrimmage
- Train locally & keep your weekends
- Coaches are motivated to create better players
- Allows time to be a multi-sport athlete
- The average player touches the ball 1 minute, 47 seconds/game.
- Little time spent on fundamentals & basic skills
- More expensive and time-consuming - with less benefit
- It doesn't matter if your team is great if you're not
- Unnecessary travel
- More prone to injury or burnout
Coaching & Player Education & Philosophies
- Intelligence: Understand the importance of certain drills and/or exercises
- Determination: Follow through on specific training programs
- Pride: Possess both personal and team pride; willing to give 100% at all times
- Mental Toughness: Learn to work through small problems and adverse situations
- Emotion: Motivate oneself and others and be able to show control under stress
- Aggressiveness: Play at full speed and accept contact: basketball is a contact sport!
- Confidence: Know that you can meet any challenge given when you're prepared
- Physical Toughness: Get faster and stronger through footwork, dynamic warm-up, and conditioning
- Repetition: Dedicate oneself to practicing fundamentals again and again
- Help support athletic development
- Incorporate comprehensive and fundamental approaches to movement patterns and other skills needed to be a successful athlete
- Offer players the ability to push themselves and learn at their own pace
- Guarantee a challenging and positive environment to learn basketball skills
- Learning must be performed at game speed
- Proper execution is important. Recognize mistakes and correct immediately
- Repetition is a must for motor learning
- Motor learning also requires mental practice
- Basketball instruction on fundamentals
- Injury prevention tools/dynamic warm-up
- Rapid response nervous system patterning
- Life tools and eating and exercise discussions tailored to encourage youth to be active and make healthy choices
What to expect from ICA coaching:
- Coaching involves three elements – the coach (instructor), the athlete (learner), and the program objectives.
- Coaches are organized, plan carefully and think long term
- Coaches identify what the players are to know, and under what conditions they are to learn
- Coach must impart his energy to the team
- The three “E’s” of basketball are Energy, Emotion and Enthusiasm
- Coach must maintain a positive attitude and help players succeed
- Coach must be patient and determined
- Coach must be good at explaining things
- Communicate by keeping it simple. Talk on the players’ level
- Tell them what you are going to teach them, teach them, and tell them what you have taught them
- Clarify rather than confuse
- Teach athletes to LISTEN
- Teach athletes to SEE things rather than just look at them
- Teach athletes to COMMUNICATE verbally, and with body language (eyes)
- ICA coaches work with individuals and teams. If you're on a BEAST team, here's what you can expect:

DEFENSE (Wins games):
- Aggressively pressure the ball handler
- Eliminate the triple threat
- Stay low. Stay on toes and be ready to move
- Have both hands up to take away shot and pass options
- Take away the middle by influencing/forcing toward baseline (trap zones)
- Contest all shots with both hands up
- Shooters are the most dangerous rebounders
- Stay down! Do not lunge or run past the shooter
- Box the shooter out using the technique of “Hand to Shoulder – Butt to the Gut”
- Influence and push dribbler toward sideline or baseline trap zones
- Stay low with “Nose on Chest”
- Contain the dribbler: do not reach or go for the steal
- Smother the ball
- Aggressively attack the ball when dribbler picks up dribble
- Belly up and trace (two hands on the ball)
- Pressure opponent, but do not foul
- Makes opposing coaches coach the game defensively
- Forces our players to anticipate and play aggressively
- Eliminates major upsets
- Makes the difference in close games
- Makes you competitive in mismatch games
- Press keeps opponents from executing their set offense(s)
- Removes the ball from opponent’s best ball handler/leader’s hand
- Forces rush or bad shots which decreases opponent’s shooting percentage by over 10%
- Creates 8 to 10 more bad passes and turnovers per game
- Results in easy transition baskets which increases scoring and shooting averages
- Encourages players to play more aggressively with sound defensive fundamentals
- Tremendous ball pressure
- Constant passing and lane attack
- Strong backside help
- Aggressive rebounding
- Get the ball up the floor as quick as possible
- Quickly move the ball from one side of the court to the other
- Share the basketball
- Set screens
- Look for lay-ups or easy shots
- Rebound
- Avoid running with your back to the ball
- Take care of the basketball (limit turnovers)
- Play smart with and without the basketball
- Know the offense
- Commit to running the floor
- Commit to rebounding (flood the boards)
- Use the floor when beginning to move
- Move with authority – cut hard all the time
- Read the defense and the ball, then react
- Get open or get out of the way, don’t stand still
- Be an actress; take the initiative, use believable fakes
- Lose the defender
- Run through the leather (meet the pass and come to the ball)
- Get close to get open
- Set low legal screens (basketball is a contact sport!)
- Two scoring options on every screen: cutter and screener
TEAM GUIDELINES
- Strive for positive thoughts and emotions always
- Treat people better than they treat you!
- Play for the love of the game and bring unbridled passion and enthusiasm daily
- Set goals to improve daily – push yourself out of your comfort zone
- Be the aggressor
- Disciplined thoughts and actions: Fundamentals + Conditioning = Victory
- Play without the option of defeat
- Replace the need to be right with the need to get better
- Talent is a gift, character is a choice
- No such things as mistakes, just learning opportunities
- Rebounder
- Defender
- Put everything you have into every possession
- Be fundamental: fake a pass, make a pass and snap a pass
- Work hard to pass at proper angles and create “passing lanes”
- Communicate with each other – listen
- Commitment to the team: there is no in between, you are either in or out
- Team heart always beats individual greatness
- Develop a love for details. They usually accompany success
- Be honest with each other. Criticism should come with goal of self and team improvement. Embrace productive conflict and strive to improve
- Hold self and others accountable
- Commitment to each other, coaches and the system
- Poor defense
- Poor attitude
- Individual over team mentality
Teaching Methods-Shooting
ICA Camp’s Shooting sessions and approach to our basketball shooting camp is essentially the same as our world-renowned approach to teaching ball handling. ICA Camp teaches the camper to perfect their shot through intense, repetitive drills that lock the necessary shooting technique into the camper’s muscle memory. This will enable the athlete to execute proper fundamentally-sound shooting mechanics.
This is accomplished by breaking the shot down into several stages, and then making sure the shooter fully understands and learns each step. This process is a lot of hard work with great attention to detail, that will produce unbelievable results. If you are willing to do the work, then ICA Camp’s Shooting sessions will dramatically improve your shooting percentages.
- BEEF
- B - balance
- E - eyes
- E - elbow
- F - follow through
- B - balance
- E - eyes
- E - elbow
- F - follow through

Balance and Footwork
Center of Gravity

The Shot

Hand placement
Shooting pocket/alignment:


Release point:
Follow through:
Follow through is sometimes referred to as “touch” or “shooter’s touch”. Great follow through is what will cause the ball to have great rotation. Proper rotation is what will cause the basketball (providing the ball has not been pushed and is dropping from a proper angle) to grab the backboard or rim and drop through the hoop rather than bounce out.

ICA Camps’ Shooting sessions uses many drills to work on each of these areas of the player’s shot. All shooters, regardless of where they are in their skill development, can and will benefit from each of these drills. How much time each camper will spend on a certain drill will depend on which part of their shot needs the most correction. There is truly only one way to lock all this into our shooters muscle memory and that is to drill and drill. Long, hard, boring, hours of repetitive drills.
Oblong ball rotation
- Incorrect feet placement and an incorrect center of gravity.
- The guide hand was improperly placed, interfering with the shot on the release.
- Poor shooting-hand placement which interfered with the shot. This is commonly referred to as "thumbing the ball".
Flat rotation or no rotation
- No follow through. The shooter did not snap their wrist at the apex of their shot. This is usually caused by a bad release point, which is generally caused by pushing the ball.
- They are usually, but not always interconnected, but usually are.
- "Pushing the ball". This is very common and is very prevalent in new campers. Changing this one bad habit will dramatically improve an athlete's shooting percentage.
Flat shot
The shot takes a low-angle path to the basket, rather than a high arc which provides a larger target. (See diagram below.) This is caused from pushing the ball, which is often the result of the shooter being outside their shooting range or they have a bad release point. They may lack the upper body strength or skills to shoot from a longer distance. Also refer to “Shooting range”.
Ball consistently misses to the right or to the left
- Shoulders are not square to the basket.
- "Thumbing" the ball.
- Feet are planted too close together when moving east to west or west to east, resulting in unstable balance. In this situation, the player is essentially falling in the same direction they are moving when they decide to pull up and shoot.
- Elbow out instead of aligned.
- Positioning the ball in front of the face, thus creating bad alignment.
- Fingers on the shooting hand are positioned too close together on the ball.
- The shooting hand is improperly placed on the ball.
- Feet are not pointing at the basket.
- Moving the head to the side, caused by bad alignment.
The ball consistently comes up short
- Shooting from beyond a player's range.
- Falling backward while making the shot.
- Shooting while the weight is over the heels, rather than the balls of the feet up through the toe. A very common balance problem.
The ball consistently goes long
- Pushing the ball.
- Shooting from beyond a player's range.
- The point here is that tracking the shooter's missed shots will reveal the skills or techniques the shooter needs to focus on in order to fix the problem.
Tracking shots

“Tracking shots” is a technique used by ICA to pinpoint what a shooter needs to work on. Problems with a player’s shot are instantly and easily spotted by a trained eye. It is helpful for the shooter to see where their shot is consistently missing in relation to the basket. It is only after they put in the hours of hard work necessary to fix the problem, and their shooting percentage has increased, that they are ready to listen to the coach and do more of the necessary work to correct other problem areas of their shot.
Shooting percentages
So far, we’ve focused on basketball shooting techniques and tips. Another important skill taught to students at ICA Camps is shooting. Our Shooting sessions consist of how shooting from different locations on the court will increase their shooting percentages. This is often referred to as “shooting range”. Once a player gets outside their shooting range, they must lower their release point, push the ball and, therefore, dramatically decrease their shooting percentage.
- Player A puts up 23 shots in the championship game on Sunday and makes 6 of them, including two three-pointers for a total of 14 points.
- Player B shoots 8 shots and makes 5 of them for a total of 10 points.
- Player C attempts 4 shots and makes 3 of them for a total of 6 points
Shooting range
ICA Camp’s drills are designed to give players exceptional ball control from the front, back, and sides of a basketball. They allow players to execute lighting-fast direction-changing moves with the ball low to the ground.
Here are some of the key concepts that are taught at ICA Camps. When students understand and master these skills, they are truly on the road to excellence and success in their basketball careers.
Topping the Basketball
Muscle Memory
Building Blocks
Quickness
Balance
Siding the Ball
Drop Step
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