When does the three point zone appear in basketball

Shooting from the 3-point zone has become the most effective weapon of any offense in the game of basketball. In recent years, it has come to the point that the story of each game can be told by one statistic - who scored more points from the three and which team has a higher success rate. Of course, one metric cannot tell the story of a full game, but to a large extent it describes how important a weapon in today's basketball the "three" is.

The 3-point zone is a relatively new introduction to basketball, although the first records of such a line date back to 1947. Then a scrimmage was played at the college level in which the zone was introduced, but the experiment was deemed unnecessary and the idea "died." Another attempt was made in 1958, but even then the "three" did not become part of basketball.

The first time a 3-point zone was used in a professional league was in 1961, when the then American Basketball League added it to the rules of the championship. However, the "ABL" lasted only a season and a half, and with the "death" of the championship and the 3-point zone, it temporarily remained in history.

The leadership of the NBA, which has existed since 1947, never thought of introducing a 3-point zone into its rules, but nevertheless in 1967 a new basketball championship appeared with the promise of experimentation and spectacle - the American Basketball Association. The ABA began then with a few key differences – it had a 3-point zone, it was played with different colored balls, and it had a dunk contest. The idea was that all these innovations would increase interest in the game and make it more interesting for fans.

"This introduction will allow shorter players to be able to shoot from distance and make defenses easier to overcome, thus making the game more interesting for fans," said George Milkan, who at the time is a commissioner of the ABA.

When the NBA absorbed the ABA teams 10 years later, the threesome remained out of the rules for a while. However, league management decided it was time for a change in tradition, and in 1979 the first three-point zone was introduced. In 1984, FIBA introduced universal rules for the "three-pointer" and added it to all its competitions, and the distance from the zone to the basket was 6.25 meters. From that point on, the "three" became a part of the game of basketball, gradually being introduced at the college and high school level, as well as in professional leagues around the world.

It is the "longest" three in the NBA today, with the zone located 7.24 meters from the basket, while everywhere else the line is 6.75 meters. At the school level (in the US), the zone is set at 6.02 meters.