How the NBA 3-point line changed the game 45 years ago

On October 12, 1979, Chris Ford made a shot that changed basketball. The Celtics guard caught a pass from teammate Tiny Archibald, fielded the ball and hit the NBA’s first-ever three-pointer. The moment was significant and marked a new era for the league — just not immediately. The NBA essentially forgot about the three for more than a decade after their introduction.

It took years for the NBA to truly embrace the idea of ​​a 3-point shot, and the shot was used sparingly in the early years. Triplanes flew in the ABA for more than a decade earlier. Long before the NBA introduced three-point basketball and before the two leagues merged in 1976, guys like Louie Dampier, George Lehmann and Les Selvage were forging a long-ball path in the ABA in the late ’60s and early ’70s the first basketball player. ever volume protect.

However, the NBA failed to immediately accept a shot, which many fans – and people within the NBA – thought was a gimmick. In the 1983-84 season, five years after the NBA’s 3-point experiment began, teams actually shot fewer threes than in 1979, the shot’s first season. There was growth in the 1980s. Very slow growth, but growth nonetheless.

In 1987-88, Danny Ainge made 148 three-pointers alone, a number that was difficult for NBA fans to imagine. Still, Ainge was an outlier; Only three players in the league (Ainge, Michael Adams and Dale Ellis) made more than 100 three-pointers this year, and the league recorded just five three-point attempts per game.

Then came the mid-90s and the 3-point shot had its (first) moment.

On opening night of the NBA in 1994, a new era began. The Warriors and Spurs combined for 32 3-point attempts in their match, the Timberwolves and Nuggets combined for 28, and the entire league finally seemed to embrace the three-ball.

That same season marked the first time an NBA player made more than 200 three-pointers in a year, with John Starks breaking Dan Majerle’s previous record set the year before. The league has also made a big leap; In 1993/94, 9.9 three-pointers were shot per game (a record at the time). In the 1994/95 season, 15.3 three-pointers were shot per game, by far the most of all time and by far the largest jump in a season. The 3-pointer should stay.

As time passed and the NBA became more familiar with the 3-pointer, players began entering the league with the 3-pointer as a key part of their game. Reggie Miller, Ray Allen, Jason Terry, Peja Stojaković and many others became elite players in the ’90s and early 2000s, in part because they made the three an important part of their game en route to All-Star appearances, All-NBA appearances. Picks, etc. made NBA titles.

Guys like Kyle Korver and Jason Kopono were important players in the 2000s because everything they did was three-point shooting. The “three-point specialist” became a common archetype in the NBA. Their only goal was to run around, get open and shoot threes. Once the NBA understood the importance of shooters, nothing was the same.

By the 2010s, the NBA had settled into a three-point trend. They were an integral part of the game of basketball, players were recruited and required to shoot them in the first place, and even centers began to get used to shooting from behind the arc. But a second three-point renaissance was at hand, and it came from an unlikely source: a skinny kid from a middle-of-the-road college program.

Steph Curry came into the NBA as a top-notch shooter who shot a fairly typical number of three-pointers. He shot fewer than five three-pointers per game in his first three seasons, which was always near the top 20 but was never unusual among NBA players. Then, in the fourth season of 2012-13, Curry shot 600 three-pointers – six hundred! – and he made 272 of them.

Suddenly, NBA executives were considering how efficient players and teams could be behind the three-point line. Three-point attempts began to grow exponentially, and in just a few years, 2018-19, teams were making 32 per game – an impressive 14 more per game since Curry entered the league. And Curry still led the attack; In the 2015-16 season, he became the first player to make 400 three-pointers in a season and led the league in three-pointers made eight times.

The game of basketball had changed again. Mid-range jump shots and long 2-pointers used to be the NBA’s norm, but in the new era, 3-pointers have been valued above all else. Instead of taking a long two-point throw, why not take a step back and take a three-point throw instead, the NBA franchises asked. Thirty years after John Starks made 200 three-pointers for the first time, 23 NBA players made 200 three-pointers in the 2023-24 season. The 3-pointer became the defining aspect of modern basketball.

That’s the biggest question in basketball right now – and one that may not yet have an answer. Have we reached the peak of how effective players can shoot 3-pointers? It’s hard to imagine anyone being a better shooter than Steph Curry, and he’s missed more than 50% of the three-point shots he’s ever made. Will players consistently make more than 50% of their threes in another 45 years? It doesn’t seem possible, but a player making 400 threes probably didn’t seem possible in 1979, so who’s to say? There are currently five 50% 3-point seasons, but none of them attempted more than 3.1 three-pointers per game.

Or will the 3-pointer take off in the NBA? If this is the case, change will be slow. The Denver Nuggets won the 2023 NBA Finals and finished 18th in the NBA in 3-point shots made. Their impressive championship run left fans wondering if the 3-pointer would become less important in building an elite NBA team. Then, the next year, the Boston Celtics won the NBA title by relying more heavily on three-pointers than any other team in the league. So if the three go out of fashion, it will happen very slowly.

Decades ago, Chris Ford hit a fancy shot that he probably didn’t realize would change the course of basketball history. But here we are, 45 years and over half a million 3-pointers later, and the shot remains the most important aspect of team building in the NBA and its biggest variable going forward.