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

On October 12th, 1979, Chris Ford made a shot that changed basketball. The Celtics guard caught a pass from teammate Tiny Archibald, set his feet, and connected on the NBA's first-ever 3-pointer. The moment was momentous and marked a new era for the league — just not immediately. The NBA basically forgot about the three for more than a decade after its introduction.

It took years for the NBA to really buy into the idea of a 3-pointer, and the shot was used sparingly in its early years. In the ABA, threes were flying more than a decade earlier. Long before the NBA introduced the three-pointer, and before the two leagues merged in 1976, guys like Louie Dampier, George Lehmann and Les Selvage blazed a long-ball trail in the ABA during the late 60s and early 70s, becoming basketball's first-ever volume shooters.

The NBA though, failed to see that immediate acceptance of a shot that plenty of fans — and people within the NBA — thought was a gimmick. In 1983-84, five years into the NBA's 3-pointer experiment, teams were actually shooting fewer threes than in 1979, the shot's inaugural season. Throughout the 1980s, there was growth. Very slow growth, but growth nonetheless.

In 1987-88, Danny Ainge made 148 threes by himself, a number that was hard for NBA fans to fathom. Still, Ainge was an outlier; only three players in the league (Ainge, Michael Adams and Dale Ellis) made more than 100 threes that year and the league saw just five three-point attempts per game.

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

The NBA's first 3-point line boom

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

That same season was the first time an NBA player made more than 200 threes in one year, as John Starks obliterated the previous record set by Dan Majerle the year before. The league made a huge leap, too; in 1993-94, there were 9.9 threes taken per game (a then-record). In 1994-95, there were 15.3 threes taken per game, by far the most ever and by far the biggest single-season leap. The 3-pointer was here to stay.

Incorporating the 3-point shot

As time passed and the NBA became more comfortable with the 3-pointer, players started to enter the league with the 3-pointer as a key piece of their game. Reggie Miller, Ray Allen, Jason Terry, Peja Stojaković and plenty of others became elite players throughout the 90s and early 2000s in part because they made the three a vital part of their game en route to All-Star appearences, All-NBA selections and NBA titles.

Guys like Kyle Korver and Jason Kopono were important players in the 2000s because all they did was shoot threes. The "three-point specialist" became a common archetype in the NBA. Their sole objective was to run around, get open and fire off threes. Once the NBA understood how important shooters are, nothing was the same.

Stephen Curry breaks the NBA

By the 2010s, the NBA had settled into a groove with three-pointers. They were an integral part of the game of basketball, players were drafted and signed primarily to shoot them and even centers were starting to get comfortable launching from behind the arc. But a second three-point renaissance was coming, and it was coming from an unlikely source: a skinny kid from a mid-major college program.

Steph Curry entered the NBA as a high-level shooter who shot a pretty typical number of threes. In his first three seasons, he shot fewer than five threes per game, which was always around the top 20 but never an anomaly among NBA players. Then in 2012-13, Curry's fourth season, he shot 600 threes — six hundred! — and he made 272 of them.

Suddenly, NBA front offices were re-thinking how efficient players and teams could be from behind the three-point line. Three-point attempts started to grow exponentially, and in just a few years time, by 2018-19, teams were taking 32 per game—that's a stunning 14 more per-game from when Curry first entered the league. And Curry was still leading the charge; he became the first player to ever make 400 threes in a season in 2015-16, and has led the league in made threes eight different times.

The game of basketball had changed once again. Midrange jump shots and long twos used to be the norm of the NBA, but the new era prioritized 3-pointers above everything else. Instead of taking a long two-pointer, why not step back and take a three-pointer instead, asked NBA franchises. Thirty years after John Starks made 200 threes for the first time, 23 NBA players hit 200 threes in 2023-24. The 3-pointer became the defining aspect of modern basketball.

Entering year 45, what comes next for the 3-pointer?

It's the biggest question in basketball right now — and one that might not have an answer yet. Have we reached the peak of how effectively players can shoot 3-pointers? It's hard to imagine someone being a better shooter than Steph Curry, and he's missed more than 50% of the three-pointers he's ever taken. In another 45 years, will players consistently be making more than 50% of their threes? It doesn't seem possible, but a player making 400 threes probably didn't seem possible in 1979, so who's to say? Currently, there are five instances of 50% 3-point seasons, but none of them attempted more than 3.1 threes per game.

Or will the 3-pointer run its course in the NBA? If that's the case, the change will come slowly. The Denver Nuggets won the 2023 NBA Finals while being 18th in the NBA in made 3-pointers. Their impressive championship run caused fans to question whether the 3-pointer was becoming less important for building an elite NBA team. Then the next year, the Boston Celtics walked to an NBA title by relying more heavily on threes than any other team in the league. So if the three is falling out of style, it will do so very slowly.

Decades ago, Chris Ford hoisted up a funky-looking 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 moving forward.