Portal:Basketball/Selected article/April, 2007
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A three-point field goal (colloquially, three-pointer or three) is a field goal—almost always scored off a jump shot—taken from behind a semi-ellipsoid arc radiating from the basket, often equidistant therefrom at a given distance, the making of which earns a team three points, one more than does a traditional field goal and two more than does a free throw.
The three-point rule was first employed in the United States in 1945 for a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) game between Columbia and Fordham Universities, but, as regards permanent usage, was first adopted by several professional leagues. The American Basketball League, having, by Abe Saperstein upon his being denied ownership of the Minneapolis Lakers franchise, been founded in 1961 as an alternative to the National Basketball Association (NBA), and desiring publicity, adopted, at the urging of Saperstein and after consultation with Paul Cohen, who brought his Washington Tapers (National Alliance of Basketball Leagues) and George Steinbrenner, who brought his Cleveland Pipers (Amateur Athletic Union), a three-point rule, but the league collapsed in 1963, midway through its second season.
A more prominent league, the Eastern Professional Basketball League, introduced the three-point shot in 1963—the league, subsequently operated as the Eastern Basketball Association and the Continental Basketball Association, is the longest consecutive user of the three-point rule—and the rule became widely known in 1968, when the American Basketball Association (ABA), in an effort to differentiate itself from the NBA, introduced, concomitant to rules extending the shot clock to 30 seconds, permitting the slam dunk, and requiring a tricolor ball, a three-point field goal rule, which was formally adopted by the NBA before its 1978-79 season, subsequent to its merger with the ABA; the international sports authority, Fédération Internationale de Basketball, three-point line pictured, followed suit six years thence and the NCAA, having employed the rule in several conferences since 1980, one year later.
Various considerations—including of league rules with respect to man-to-man and zone defenses and of league desires for offensive performance, especially in the context of comebacks and buzzer beaters—have led governing bodies to adopt different distances away from the basket at which to place the three-point arc, almost always between 19.75 feet (6.02 metres) and 23.75 feet (7.24 meters), and different regulations as to whether the distance from the basket is uniform or diminishes proximate to the baselines, but leagues categorically require that a shooter's feet remain behind the three-point line until the time he jumps and begins his shot and do not touch inside the line prior to his releasing the ball, lest the shot, if good, should be worth just two points.
