The coach
of the Rochester RazorSharks, the city’s first-year expansion franchise in the
American Basketball Association, paced back and forth, hands clasped behind his
back, across the gym floor as his players hunched over and gasped for air.
A couple of
the players, it seems, were not finishing their wind sprints in the allotted 30
seconds, a failure that capped off a generally underwhelming practice at the
Metro YMCA last week.
“This is
your job,” he said sternly. “For most of you, this is how you earn your living.
For most of you, this is all the money you make. But I’m not sure if we came to
work today.”
He paused a
moment, letting his players absorb his chagrin as they stood along the baseline
and waited for the cue to start running again.
“We
couldn’t play tomorrow if we had to,” Baker said before telling the players
that they would keep running until everyone came in under the 30-second bar —
which everyone proceeded to do on the next round of sprints.
After
catching their breaths, the RazorSharks shot a few free throws and did some
cool-down stretching before gathering at mid-court, then heading for a brief,
closed-door, players-only meeting.
No doubt
one of main topics of that meeting was their coach’s ire with their effort.
“He had the
right to be unhappy,” said shooting guard and Greece Olympia grad Demond
Stewart shortly after the players returned to the gym to collect their bags and
chug some Gatorade. “Everybody seemed like they weren’t into it today.”
At the time,
the team had precisely 11 days to get into it, and, despite the lackluster practice that day, Baker remained
confident in the team’s prospects and even said such down days will make the
team stronger.
“It wasn’t
very good today,” he said, “but it’s all part of the process. I would worry if
they were good every day.”
The team
practiced six days last week to prepare for its season opener against the
Buffalo Rapids at Blue Cross Arena on November 5. Although some minor tweaking
of the roster still had to be done, players, coaches, and team officials all
shared the same basic goals: win and survive financially. They hope to meet the
second goal by displaying a brand of basketball that attracts fans and
separates itself from the often plodding, methodical half-court game offered by
the sport’s top league, the NBA.
“The first
year is the most difficult, because you don’t have any history,” said Brendan
Rooney, the team’s director of player personnel, as he eyed practice. “But this
is the year we put our stamp on [the game]. As the season goes on, as we play
some games and the fans see the product on the floor, people will watch. It’ll
be an exciting brand of basketball.”
In their inaugural,
36-game season, the RazorSharks will be one of 48 teams in the ABA.
Five years after launching for the 2000-01 season — in which the league had a
modest eight teams — the ABA has
grown six-fold, with teams as far away as Tijuana
and Beijing. Franchises have sprung
up in what normally are thought of as small sports markets like Hawaii,
Mississippi, and New
Mexico.
And the
league isn’t done: ABA co-founder
and CEO Joe Newman says he’s expecting at least 20 more franchises for the
2006-07 season.
“We put
together a business model, but we had no idea how attractive it would be” to
investors, Newman says. “I don’t know if we ever had any idea it would grow
this fast.”
That
business model, quite simply, is to make games “fan friendly and family
friendly,” Newman says. One key piece of the model is ticket prices. Referring to
the once-great Rochester Royals, the NBA team that left the FlourCity a half-century ago (and
eventually landed in Sacramento as
the Kings), Newman says “tickets 50 years ago for the Royals are the same as
tickets to the ABA today.”
The other
facet of the ABA’s business model
is to provide fans with something different, something quicker, more
high-scoring and more exciting than the current NBA. In fact, the modern
incarnation of the ABA is openly courting memories of the original ABA, the
upstart pro league that rivaled the NBA for about a decade in the ’60s and the
’70s and featured high-octane offenses, high-flying stars like “Dr. J” Julius
Erving and George “The Iceman” Gervin, and a red, white, and blue ball, all of
which contrasted sharply with the relative dull NBA and its drab orange ball.
To that
end, the modern ABA has finagled
the rules of the game to encourage a wide-open, full-court style of ball. To
facilitate full-court pressing, for example, the league has its “3-D” rule,
which adds an extra point to any basket scored off a turnover in the backcourt.
And to discourage lumbering big men from posting up and simply backing in to
the hoop, ABA rules place a three-second limit on dribbling in such situations,
forcing big men to, well, shoot or get off the pot.
Newman says
that the new ABA style of play is
closer to international and college ball as practiced by the University of Kentucky
or DukeUniversity.
When combined, Newman says, the relatively low ticket prices and up-tempo game
will draw fans — and make money.
“It’s a
much more exciting game, and it’s affordable,” he says. He also notes that
while most teams “did OK, not particularly well” financially last season,
“we’ve made some significant adjustments, so we hope it will be better this
year.”
(It is also
worth noting that the new ABA is miles ahead of the NBA in terms of diversity
at the management level: more than 60 percent of the teams are owned by ethnic minorities
or women, and the ABA now features the Kentucky Colonels, who are owned by
Stephanie Roach, the first African-American woman to own a professional sports
team.)
Newman also
believes the RazorSharks are a great — and potentially profitable —
addition to the league. “Rochester
has proved itself to be a great sports town,” he says. “We’re confident it will
be one of the best franchises in the league.”
The Rochester
RazorSharks are run by president Severko Hrywnak and COO Orest Hrywnak, who
seem to be committed to placing a winning product on the floor.
While the
RazorSharks’ roster will include several homegrown players, the team has also
been willing to sign higher-profile athletes to the squad — people like Chris
Carrawell, who earned Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year honors in
2000 while starring at Duke and who believes he’s already starting to make a
connection with the local community.
“So far, to
me it’s been a satisfying experience,” he said at last week’s practice while nursing
a twisted ankle. “I don’t know most of the team, I don’t know the city, but
people on the street have been very receptive. It looks like there’s lots of
support. We have a good coach who’s a good fit for the team and a hard-working
group of guys.”
That group
includes Stewart, who graduated from Olympia in 1996 and starred at Niagara
University before playing pro ball in Europe the last four years. Stewart said
he returned home to play for the RazorSharks because he couldn’t pass up “the
opportunity to play in front of my family.”
Giving back
to the community that raised him is also a high priority for Stewart. “There’s
a lot of negativity going on,” he says, referring partly to the spate of
youth-centered violence in the city recently. “Hopefully we can be a positive
spotlight. We have a lot of good guys here on the team, a lot of good role
models and good citizens. We’re trying to do the right thing and hopefully
reflect on the younger kids.”
Also
expected to make the final roster is Scott Martzloff, a towering center who
played on McQuaid’s 1988 state title team and later suited up for Holy Cross.
After playing for various teams in Europe and Asia for several years,
Martzloff, like Stewart, was ready to return to the hometown stability the
RazorSharks offer.
“I love the
game of basketball,” he said after practice last week. “This is a great
opportunity, and I want to see it be as successful as possible. I want to be a
part of something special.”
Martzloff
acknowledges that the league is pushing for a faster-paced style of play, but
he also says that any team — especially his team — should first and
foremost use what works.
“There is a
lot of scoring, and they want to see a lot of exciting action,” he said. “But
when it comes down to it, to be successful you have to play together and have a
strong defense.”
Baker
expresses similar sentiments. The tall, lanky coach with the salt-and-pepper
goatee exudes an aura of lovable irascibility — “I might be the nicest guy in
the world if you come in to work,” he tells his team, “but if we decide we’re
not going to work, I get shitty” — and comes across as a stern disciplinarian
who knows how to get the most out of his players.
Baker
refuses to say if his team will follow the league mantra and employ a wide-open
style of play. In fact, as of last week, he wasn’t sure exactly how to describe
his team.
“I can’t
call it because I haven’t seen it. Check with me in a month,” he said as the
players filtered out of the gym. “We’re going to do whatever we need to do to
be able to win. If that means [scores of] 110-105, fine. If that means 55-50,
fine.”
Whatever
their game turns out to be, it’ll probably take more rounds of wind sprints to
get there. Or maybe not.
“I’m
already in good shape,” Stewart said. “I’m ready to go.”
The Rochester
RazorSharks open their 36-game season on Saturday, November, 5 at 7:35 p.m. at Blue Cross Arena. Single-game
tickets range from $8 to $25; season tickets are $120 to $360. The team will
play 18 games at home this season, which lasts into March. Tickets and
information: 232-9190, www.rochesterrazorsharks.com.
This article appears in Nov 2-8, 2005.
