As every educator can appreciate, if a student follows a certain process and learns from their mistakes, they can improve as the year goes on.
As a mathematics education major in Syracuse University’s School of Education—and a now-legendary Orange basketball player—Jim Lee ’75 adopted that approach and applied it to his own life as he became a star player, admired teacher, successful real estate agent and sales manager, author of a book on foul shooting, and devoted husband, father, and grandfather.
“I used everything I learned, especially with math, to get from point A to point B, and I understood there was a process to get there,” Lee says. “Just like shooting a foul shot, there’s a routine and you do the same thing all the time.”
On Feb. 21, 2026, Lee formally joined the legends of Syracuse basketball when his No. 10 jersey, along with Rudy Hackett’s No. 45, was retired during the Orange’s game against North Carolina at the JMA Wireless Dome.
No-doubt Shooter
On the court, Lee improved every year, and as a senior in 1975 he and Hackett led the Orange (then, the “Orangemen”) to their first NCAA Tournament Final Four appearance. Lee made what might be the most important basket in Syracuse history when he sank a last-second jump shot to lift the upstart Orangemen to a 78-76 win over powerhouse North Carolina and into the semifinals.
Although Syracuse lost to another powerhouse team, Kentucky, in the Final Four, that season established the Orangemen as a national contender and set the stage for the glory years to come with Hall of Fame coach Jim Boeheim ’66 and 30,000-strong crowds at the Carrier Dome (now the JMA Wireless Dome).
“He was a no-doubt shooter. When you could get Jim a shot, he was going to make it,” says Boeheim, who was an assistant coach in 1975. “That win [over North Carolina] is the greatest upset in the history of Syracuse basketball. That’s not even debatable.”
“I was lucky enough to make more than I missed at the end of a game, but in hindsight it’s still only a game and there are more important issues in this world than just a game.”
Jim Lee ’75
While he’s excited about joining the likes of Dave Bing ’66, Dwayne “Pearl” Washington ’86, and Carmelo Anthony as Syracuse players who’ve had their jerseys retired, Lee says he has always kept his basketball career in perspective, and he is most proud of the impact he has had on his family, students, and co-workers.
“I was lucky enough to make more than I missed at the end of a game, but in hindsight it’s still only a game and there are more important issues in this world than just a game,” Lee says.
The Same Approach
Although he now lives in Syracuse, Lee is originally from Kirkwood, a small town of about 5,500 people outside of Binghamton, NY. He followed in the footsteps of his brother, Mike ’73, another standout player at Syracuse who in his senior year helped lead the Orangemen to their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1966.
“I knew from day one that if Syracuse offered me a scholarship, I was going to come because I loved playing with Mike, and he watched over me, gave me guidance, and told me what to do,” says Jim, who is two years younger than Mike.
Boeheim says his first-ever recruiting trip was to see Jim play a game at Whitney Point when he was a high school senior. Lee was always a great shooter—he won that game with a last second shot from the same spot on the court where he would beat North Carolina—but Boeheim says where Lee greatly improved at Syracuse was on defense.
“He probably drew more charges [from the opposing offense] than any player we’ve ever had, and he got the one against [North Carolina star] Phil Ford that got us the ball back so he could make that shot,” Boeheim says.
At Syracuse, Lee first played on the freshman team and then started just one game as a sophomore on the varsity. But as he learned to follow and trust then-head coach Roy Danforth’s tutelage on refining his skills. He started and averaged 13.7 points per game as a junior and 17.2 points per game as a senior, when he finished sixth in the nation in free throw shooting.
Meanwhile, Lee moved from his initial liberal arts curriculum to the School of Education, where he studied to be a math teacher. For a shy kid from a small town, it was a challenge because while he did not mind playing basketball in front of thousands of people, he was nervous about speaking to a classroom of students.
“I still used everything I learned from [my teaching career] and playing basketball and incorporated it into everything I did.”
Jim Lee ’75
“I didn’t like to talk all that much, but teaching taught me that,” Lee says. “And I was a math teacher and there’s a process to get to the end result every time, and basically, every job I had after that when I was in charge of things, I took the same approach.”
The Teaching Component
Following graduation, Lee played professional basketball in Italy before returning to Syracuse in 1978 and becoming a math teacher and junior varsity basketball coach at Bishop Grimes High School in Syracuse.
He taught there for two-and-a-half years and keeps in touch with many former students: “And that was 50 years ago!” Lee says. He then spent 10 years as a real estate agent, where his math education background came in handy as he helped clients determine what kind of home they could afford.
In 1990, Lee became a wholesale manager for Mirabito Energy Products, which was expanding into Central New York and the state’s Southern Tier. In 2008, he joined NOCO Energy Corporation as its wholesale manager for the territory from Syracuse to Buffalo.
“The teaching component helped me immensely,” Lee says. “Even though my teaching career was short, I still used everything I learned from that and playing basketball and incorporated it into everything I did while I was working and even parenting.”
A Great Life
In 2012, Lee literally wrote the book on free throw shooting when he published Fifteen Feet for Free: A Simple Guide to Foul Shooting—for Players at Any Level—from the Driveway to the NBA (AuthorHouse, 2012—15 feet is the distance from the free throw line to the basket). Lee donated half of the proceeds to Syracuse University’s Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans.
Lee, who turned 73 on February 28, has received many honors in his career, including being named as a Syracuse Letterwinner of Distinction in 2009. But he says the jersey retirement ceremony will be special because his family, and especially his grandchildren, will be traveling to Syracuse to see it.
Along with his wife of nearly 43 years, Lou Ann (a former teacher at Onondaga Hill Middle School in Syracuse), Lee was joined by his son Jay, his wife Brittnay, and their three children from Chicago; his daughter Amanda from New York City; and his youngest daughter Suzanne (“Suz”) and her husband Matt from Los Angeles.
“I’ve had a great life,” Lee concludes. “I did all the things I wanted to do and made sure I could be there to see my kids do their things. I knew with every job I had I was going to get better and better, and that’s what I learned at Syracuse.”
All photos courtesy of Jim Lee.
