Bee, Clair F.
Basketball
b. March 2, 1900, Grafton, WV
d. May 20, 1983
After graduating from high school in 1917, Bee served in World War I, played some semi-pro football, and then attended Waynesburg, PA, College, where he played baseball, basketball, and football. He became basketball and football coach at Rider College in New Jersey in 1928. In three seasons there, his basketball teams won 55 games while losing only 7 and his football teams were 17-7-1.
Bee moved on to Long Island University as basketball coach for the 1931/32 season and soon made the Bluebirds one of the top teams in the country. They were undefeated in 1935/36 and 1938/39, in one stretch winning 43 consecutive games. The streak was broken in one of basketball's most significant games, when Hank Luisetti of Stanford introduced the one-hand shot to the East, leading his team to a 45-31 victory at Madison Square Garden in December of 1936.
Bee's LIU teams won the National Invitation Tournament in 1939 and 1941. He missed two years while serving in World War II, but returned in 1946. Some of his players were involved in the point shaving scandal that was revealed in 1951 and Bee promptly resigned. He coached the NBA's Baltimore Bullets for three seasons, 1951/52 through 1953/54, and then left coaching to direct basketball camps and clinics.
Bee is considered the inventor of the 1-3-1 defense. He was a leading advocate of the 3-second rule and he helped the NBA develop its 24-second clock, which probably saved professional basketball from extinction. He was also a prolific writer, producing twenty-one non-fiction books and twenty-three books in the "Chip Hilton" juvenile sports fiction series.
Bee had a record of 357 wins and 79 losses at LIU, for an overall mark of 412-86 and a winning percentage of .827, the best in history.