[1] He began his career in the NCAA, where he gathered several "Player of the Year" recognitions and earned All-American honors as both a junior and senior while at Marquette University.

There he went on to become a 1st Team, PSAL All City basketball player and honor student at the DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx.

The Warriors defeated UNC-Charlotte 51–49 in the semifinal round when Lee found Jerome Whitehead with a length of the court pass for a score just before the buzzer.

In the final against North Carolina, Lee scored 19 points and led the Warriors to a come-from-behind 67–59 victory to secure the national championship.

Lee then went on to become the first Puerto Rican player to play in the National Basketball Association, when he was chosen in the first round of the 1978 NBA draft by the Atlanta Hawks.

After three games with the Cavs in the 1979-1980 season, Lee suffered a knee injury[2] that would require surgery,[3] and proved to be too big of an obstacle for him to overcome as far as his basketball career was concerned.

Before the season was over, he would be traded once again, to the Los Angeles Lakers, where, he played alongside Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, among others, for eleven games, before his injury recurred, forcing him to retire.