Coaching legend Clair F. Bee, whose innovations on the hardcourt earned him the nickname “Mr. Basketball,” will be the subject of a one-day conference at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus in February.
College basketball Hall of Fame Coach Lou Carnesecca and members of Coach Bee’s family will be among the panelists at the free event, “Bee-Ball: The Coaching, Teaching & Sports Writing Legacy of Clair Bee,” February 5, from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the campus’s Schwartz Athletic Center, formerly the Brooklyn Paramount Theater, One University Place, corner of Flatbush Avenue Extension and DeKalb Avenue, in downtown Brooklyn. The conference is free and open to the public.
The inventor of the three-second rule, the 1-3-1 zone defense and the 24-second shot clock in the National Basketball Association, Bee (1896-1983) led Long Island University’s Blackbirds to their greatest successes in the 1930s and 1940s.
Other conference panelists include Bee’s grandson, Michael Clair Farley; Melissa Merson, daughter of Leo Merson of the 1936 Blackbirds squad; and author and NBA analyst Charley Rosen.
For more, contact professors Michael Hittman at 718-488-1185 or Eugene Spatz at 718-780-4563.
