Two historic events occurred at old Boston Garden on the evening of Oct. 12, 1979. A rookie named Larry Joe Bird made his debut for the Celtics that night in a 114-106 win over visiting Houston, scoring 14 points and grabbing 10 rebounds in 28 foul-plagued minutes.
And a new rule debuted.
On one Celtics first-half possession, point guard Tiny Archibald casually snapped the ball to backcourt mate Chris Ford, who was a few steps behind the top of the key, a few inches behind an arc freshly painted on the Garden’s parquet floor. Ford squared and shot and the ball splashed through.
It was the first 3-point field goal in NBA history.
Tuesday night, the Golden State Warriors visited Madison Square Garden and it was fixing to be a splendid celebratory night for the 3-point shot, now in its 43rd year of use in the NBA. The Warriors’ star, Stephen Curry, entered the game against the Knicks two 3-pointers shy of breaking Ray Allen’s career record of 2,973. Curry set a new mark less than 5 minutes into the game as he drilled his 2,974th career trey. The Davidson product is still only 33 years old, and could well play another 4-5 years and reset the all-time number to some unreachable plateau before he’s done.
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What he’s already done, what the Warriors have already done, is transfigure the sport, permanently. Curious coaches have long understood there were powers behind the 3-pointer. When Rick Pitino armed most of his players with a green light at Providence over 35 years ago, he figured to not use it would be overthinking a simple part of the game.
“If you can make them three at a time instead of two at a time,” he said in the winter of 1987, “even I don’t need a calculator to figure that out.”
It was a summer day in 1961 when Abe Saperstein, impresario of the Harlem Globetrotters and founder of the new American Basketball League, visited a Chicago gym with his friend, DePaul coach Ray Meyer. Saperstein had an idea to add a little spice to his new league, so the coaches took tape measures and carefully tried to figure out what distance a shot ought to travel to be worthy of an extra point.
The men came up with 25 feet. The geography of a basketball court insisted that the first 3-point line couldn’t extend to the corners, until Saperstein heeded advice from his league’s coaches and turned his line to an arch, requiring about a 22-footer from each corner.
The ABL only survived two years. The 3-pointer went into hibernation until 1967, when the ABA was founded and welcomed Saperstein’s old trick, a nice bookend to its red, white and blue ball.
“We called it the home run, because the 3-pointer was exactly that,” George Mikan, formerly a legendary NBA center and the ABA’s first commissioner, told Terry Pluto in the classic oral history of the NBA, “Loose Balls.” “It brought fans out of their seats.”
And it immediately made coaches around the game both excited and anxious.
“For a coach, the 3-point play is a form of mental gymnastics,” ex-Knicks coach Hubie Brown, who coached the 1975 Kentucky Colonels to the ABA title, told Pluto. “All your life, you’ve been trained that a basket is worth two points. That was how you always played the game, how the game was always played, until the ABA made the 3-point play popular.
“So a guy makes two field goals, you figure that’s four points. But in the ABA, it could be six points and that can shake you up as a coach.”
The game itself was shook, and for good. On Nov. 13 that first NBA season, the Dallas Chaparrals led the Indiana Pacers 118-116 with two seconds left in the game. Indiana’s Jerry Harkness took the inbounds pass and heaved the ball 92 feet — and through the basket. Everyone in the gym was stunned that the game was tied.
They were really surprised when it dawned on them all that the Pacers had actually won the game, because Harkness’ prayer came from 68 feet beyond the 3-point arc. It was the only 3 that Harkness made all season.
And now: the Warriors, who shoot 3s with abandon, who have inspired an entirely new way to play, led by Curry, the greatest gunner of them all.