The city of Rochester won the National Basketball Association world championship with the famous Rochester Royals in 1950-51 season. Now a new team called the RazorSharks will represent the city in the American Basketball Association.
Player-coach of the Flower City five is Lazarus Sims, who guided the Syracuse Orangemen into the 1996 NCAA national championship game, which they lost to Kentucky.
Sims nearly quit playing this season when Coach Jim Boeheim of SU offered him a coaching job as a graduate assistant last spring. After discussing the position with Boeheim, both agreed it wasn't the right job for Sims. Under NCAA rules, grad assistants do mostly administrative functions - monitoring players' academic progress, handle ticket requests, etc.
Sims, 33, told Scott Pitoniak of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, “I want to be on the court teaching the game, especially to the guards, and that's what coach Boeheim wanted from me, too, maybe down the road.”
Sims has played for 13 different pro teams in six leagues. He was a member of the famed Harlem Globetrotters in 2003-04.
After graduating from Syracuse in 1996, the 6-4, 204-pound sharpshooter's goal was to play in the NBA. He had a tryout with the Memphis Grizzlies but was cut after two weeks. He has played in Szczecin, Poland; Caracas, Venezuela and Dodge City, Kansas.
Besides leading Syracuse into the 1996 championship game, Sims led the Big East Conference in assists and was second in the nation that season.
The RazorSharks' floor general said he would like to play as long as his body holds up and he can still have fun. “Some guys are playing in this league because they want to reach the next level. Some are playing for a paycheck. I'm playing because I love the game,” Sims told Pitoniak.
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The National Collegiate Athletic Association, better known as the NCAA, is the governing body that controls all college athletics.
This football season the NCAA decided celebrations on the field had to be kept to a minimum, and 13 types of dances, shimmies and dives have been prohibited.
Among them are bows to the crowd, airborne dives into the end zone with no one around, plus excessive pounding of one's chest and choreographed routines, like teammates posing for a mock group photograph. Those result in 15-yard penalties for unsportsmanlike conduct.
The NCAA also adjusted some language in the rules against spearing, which is delivering a hit with the helmet. Previously, calls on that type of hit had been left up to the officials. Now, all incidents of spearing are an automatic 15-yard penalty.
Last season the Big Ten adopted instant replay as an experiment and now similar systems are being used across the country. Every conference except the Western Athletic Conference and the Sun Belt has some sort of replay.
In the Mountain West, coaches are allowed to throw one challenge flag each half, a nod to the NFL system. A challenge that is not reversed costs a team a timeout. If a team is out of timeouts, the coach cannot throw the flag.
Every conference except Conference USA has decisions made in a replay booth. Conference USA has officials on the field view the replay and make a ruling.
Sims nearly quit playing this season when Coach Jim Boeheim of SU offered him a coaching job as a graduate assistant last spring. After discussing the position with Boeheim, both agreed it wasn't the right job for Sims. Under NCAA rules, grad assistants do mostly administrative functions - monitoring players' academic progress, handle ticket requests, etc.
Sims, 33, told Scott Pitoniak of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, “I want to be on the court teaching the game, especially to the guards, and that's what coach Boeheim wanted from me, too, maybe down the road.”
Sims has played for 13 different pro teams in six leagues. He was a member of the famed Harlem Globetrotters in 2003-04.
After graduating from Syracuse in 1996, the 6-4, 204-pound sharpshooter's goal was to play in the NBA. He had a tryout with the Memphis Grizzlies but was cut after two weeks. He has played in Szczecin, Poland; Caracas, Venezuela and Dodge City, Kansas.
Besides leading Syracuse into the 1996 championship game, Sims led the Big East Conference in assists and was second in the nation that season.
The RazorSharks' floor general said he would like to play as long as his body holds up and he can still have fun. “Some guys are playing in this league because they want to reach the next level. Some are playing for a paycheck. I'm playing because I love the game,” Sims told Pitoniak.
- - - -
The National Collegiate Athletic Association, better known as the NCAA, is the governing body that controls all college athletics.
This football season the NCAA decided celebrations on the field had to be kept to a minimum, and 13 types of dances, shimmies and dives have been prohibited.
Among them are bows to the crowd, airborne dives into the end zone with no one around, plus excessive pounding of one's chest and choreographed routines, like teammates posing for a mock group photograph. Those result in 15-yard penalties for unsportsmanlike conduct.
The NCAA also adjusted some language in the rules against spearing, which is delivering a hit with the helmet. Previously, calls on that type of hit had been left up to the officials. Now, all incidents of spearing are an automatic 15-yard penalty.
Last season the Big Ten adopted instant replay as an experiment and now similar systems are being used across the country. Every conference except the Western Athletic Conference and the Sun Belt has some sort of replay.
In the Mountain West, coaches are allowed to throw one challenge flag each half, a nod to the NFL system. A challenge that is not reversed costs a team a timeout. If a team is out of timeouts, the coach cannot throw the flag.
Every conference except Conference USA has decisions made in a replay booth. Conference USA has officials on the field view the replay and make a ruling.
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