Imagine a college basketball landscape without the 3-point shot, a place where big men ruled unopposed and guards played in their shadows.
It would be a place without a Stephen Curry shooting a small school like Davidson to unknown NCAA tournament heights (2008). Where a Northwestern State couldn’t eliminate an Iowa on a last-gasp, fade-away 3-pointer (2006), or a Siena likely doesn’t outlast an Ohio State in double overtime (2009). For all the uncool kids, the 3-point shot has been the greatest equalizer since the rock guitar.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the trey, and, as we conclude this season, with Atlanta preparing for the South Regional final, think how much more predictable every step of this Big Dance would be without it.
Think how much local lore would never have been written. Georgia Tech’s James Forrest wouldn’t be forever remembered for his impossible catch-spin-and-shoot game-winner against USC 22 years ago. And Al McGuire’s call of the shot — “Holy mackerel! Holy mackerel! Holy mackerel!” — wouldn’t be one of March’s holiest incantations.
Without it, Tech’s “3D” Dennis Scott would be lacking a classic nickname, for “2D” is just so flat, so yesterday.
Basically, it would be a much blander world. A world without rainbows.
Not embraced at first
“I’m living off the 3-point shot, that’s what fed me growing up,” laughed Duke guard Seth Curry, whose father Dell was a great NBA sniper (ranked 32nd on the career 3-point list) and brother Stephen holds the NCAA record for 3-pointers made in a season (162 in 2007-08). “I don’t know what my life would be without the 3-point line, but I’m glad it’s there.”
“It would be a much different game,” said Bob Steitz, whose late father, Ed, as onetime head of college basketball’s rules committee, is credited with installing the shot throughout the NCAA.
“You see flashbacks of great tournament games before the 3-point shot, and you’ll see offenses actually passing up 18-foot wide open shots to try to get the ball closer to the basket. And you see defenses really packed in, protecting the key and protecting the basket.”
Generations of players now have been processed through the mill of college basketball knowing only the Siren’s call of the 3-point line.
But not so long ago, the extra credit shot was seen as the ruination of the game, a gimmick that would turn it into a full-court turkey shoot.
A quarter century later, the shot having bonded so successfully with the DNA of basketball, it is difficult to remember the loud objections that greeted it at birth.
“Twenty-five years ago, people thought it was a bad shot; they thought it was going to kill the game,” said Florida coach Billy Donovan. Playing for Rick Pitino at Providence in 1986-87, Donovan was the first to take full advantage of a line that was 19 feet, 9 inches distant (it has since been moved back a foot). He still holds the Friars’ single-season 3-point shot record. Not surprisingly, his Gators regularly live or die by the shot.
One of the loudest arc enemies was then-Indiana coach Bobby Knight. “The place for the 3-point shot is between the reptile cages and the lion cages in the Lincoln Park zoo,” he grumped back when. Odd how he came to appreciate the shot once dead-eye Steve Alford came to Bloomington.
“All the polls taken, people were not in favor of that shot,” said Steitz, an associate athletic director at Villanova.
“Some of [the criticism] got personal,” Steitz said. “My dad let that run right off his shoulders. For the rest of the family, that kind of hurt. Over the course of time, this thing evolved and coaches learned how to exploit it and it changed the game just the way my dad thought it would — which was really, really satisfying.”
Soon enough, coaches had to put away their contempt and adapt.
An equalizing shot
What they discovered was that a shooter with range was pure gold. They didn’t have to be CPAs to recognize that there was great value in scoring three points on a shot rather than two.
Every coach had his a-ha moment. When Scott arrived at Georgia Tech in 1987-88, it was a revelation for Bobby Cremins. “Two weeks after I got here, Bobby’s whole perspective changed,” Scott said. “Plenty of times, I remember early on I’d hear him yell: ‘No, no, no — oh, good shot.’ Because he hadn’t seen anybody shoot from that distance every game.”
Those who called the game also had to alter outlooks as the shot went from a curiosity to an essential.
“We used to be a little more in awe: ‘Hey, that was a threeeee!!!’” said CBS Sports’ Jim Nantz. “As you came to realize how they were making it with regularity and how teams had perfected it, I think you had to temper your enthusiasm a little bit more.”
The shooting-from-downtown revitalization complete, the once-cursed 3-point shot is an element as central to the game as hardwood and tin whistles.
It has grown to become the purest expression of a shooter’s vanity, a shot that every mother’s son and daughter wants to try as soon as they are strong enough to heave the ball downrange.
Seth Curry said his dad wouldn’t let him even attempt a shot outside the arc until he was in middle school, insisting that his son perfect his form from close in. But, “I tried to sneak ’em in when he wasn’t out there,” he confessed. At any age, the lure of the 3 is irresistible.
Evolution marches double-time in sports. And, with the 3, there emerged two species of scorers: He who rattles the rim with a dunk, and he who caresses it with his long range touch. Lost has been much of the good work in between; even Steitz admits that the death of the mid-range jump shooter can be attributed in large part to culture of the 3.
That culture also has fostered a certain gunslinger’s confidence that is fascinating when put into play. Those who shoot from afar are an unflinching breed. “You put so much work into it that it becomes an easier shot than it seems like it should be,” said Florida State’s Michael Snaer, who this season hit late 3s to beat both Duke and Virginia Tech. “You have no choice but to believe they’re going in.”
The impact of the shot on the game was just what Ed Steitz promised.
It has been like one huge hit of Neo-Synephrine, unclogging the court, spreading defenses and allowing offenses to breathe.
It has been the most reliable tool employed by the mid-major schools to level the court. Fittingly, a lengthy shot has been the long shot’s best friend.
It has given rise of the guard and the mutation of the big man (Duke’s 6-11 Ryan Kelly was 41 percent from beyond the arc this season).
Ed Steitz helped formulate many other college basketball rules changes in his time, including the shot clock, the re-introduction of the dunk, the phasing out of the jump ball. Of them all, insists his son, the 3-point shot stands alone as having the greatest impact. “It was game changing,” he said.
The act of assigning more value to a scoring play based on distance was singularly daring. Such a thing would be outrageous anywhere else, like making a 450-foot shot to center worth more than the 330-foot home run that just cleared the right field fence. Or awarding a team four points for any field goal of more than 50 yards.
But in college basketball, the 3 fits, like it was there with the first peach basket.
“It’s something that has equalized the game, made the NCAA tournament more wide open, and I’m really happy we have it,” said Nantz.
Joyce Kilmer didn’t exactly write it this way, but perhaps he would have, had he been fortunate enough to come along during this widely celebrated part of March Madness:
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a three.
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The 3 Timeline
1945 – Columbia and Fordham employ a 3-point line for one game.
1968 – American Basketball Association includes the shot as a marketing tool.
1979 – The NBA employs a 3-point line on a trial basis. The line extends 22 feet from the basket at the corners, 23 feet at the top of the key. Chris Ford of the Boston Celtics hits the league’s first 3. The rule became permanent the following year.
1980 – The Southern Conference becomes the first collegiate body to embrace the shot, for one season.
1982 – ACC experiments for one season with a line only 17 feet, 9 inches from the basket.
1984 – FIBA, the international governing body of the sport, adopts the shot.
1986 – NCAA joins the 3-point party.
2007 – NCAA moves the 3-point line back one foot, to 20 feet, 9 inches.
2011 -- NCAA moves the line back one foot for women, to match the men’s shot of 20-9.
NCAA 3-Point Shooting Records
Individual
3s made, game – 15, Keith Venay, Marshall, Dec. 14, 1996.
3s made, season – 162, Stephen Curry, Davidson, 2008.
3s made, career – 457, J.J. Redick, Duke, 2003-06.
Attempts, game – 27, Bruce Seals, Manhattan, Jan. 31, 2000 (9 made).
Attempts, season – 380, Kevin Foster, Santa Clara, 2011 (140 made).
Attempts, career – 1,192 Keydren Clark, St. Peters, 2003-06 (435 made).
Shooting percentage, game, minimum 10 made – 100, Andre Smith, George Mason, Jan. 18, 2008 (10 of 10).
Shooting percentage, season, minimum 100 made – 57.3, Steve Kerr (114 of 199), Arizona 1988.
Shooting percentage, career, minimum 300 made – 46.9, Stephen Sir, San Diego St./Northern Arizona, 2003-07 (323 of 689).
Team
3s made, game – 28, Troy vs. George Mason, Dec. 10, 1994.
3s attempted, game – 74, Troy vs. George Mason, Dec. 10, 1994.
Shooting percentage, game, minimum 10 made – 93.3, Ohio State vs. Wisconsin, March 6, 2011 (14 of 14).
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