On This Date: The NBA's First 3-Pointer, and Larry Bird's First Game (Oct. 12, 1979)

On Friday night, Oct. 12, 1979, at a sold-out Boston Garden, the Houston Rockets led the Boston Celtics 17-16 with 3:48 left in the 1st quarter of opening night. A Celtics rookie, playing his first NBA game, drew a crowd of defenders and kicked the ball out to guard Chris Ford, who was standing behind a brand-new line painted on the floor. Ford let it go, and it went in.

It was the first 3-point basket in NBA history, or at least the first one the NBA was willing to put its name on. And the rookie who passed it to him was Larry Bird.

"They were double- or triple-teaming me," Bird joked years later, "so I passed it to him."

A gimmick on a one-year trial

The 3-pointer wasn't new. Abe Saperstein's American Basketball League used it in 1961, and the ABA made it famous starting in 1967, along with the red, white and blue ball. The NBA had spent a decade treating it like a carnival trick.

In June 1979, the league's Board of Governors finally voted 15-7 to try it, for one season. The line sat 23 feet, 9 inches from the basket at the top of the key and 22 feet in the corners. Not everybody was sold. "We don't need it," said Red Auerbach, the Celtics' president and one of the most powerful voices in the sport. "I say leave our game alone."

The first one (probably)

Ford's shot wasn't the only 3-pointer made that night. It wasn't even the only one in the building. Six players made threes on opening night: Ford; Houston's Rick Barry, in the same game; Washington's Kevin Grevey; Cleveland's Willie Smith; and Phoenix's Paul Westphal and Don Buse, who made 2 apiece.

So how did Ford get the honor? Nobody wrote down the clock time of anyone's shot. 3 days later, the NBA put out a press release crediting Ford, because the Celtics' game had tipped off first. Grevey's game in Landover, Md., started 35 minutes later. Grevey argued for years that his went in first. The record book still says Ford.

The other debut

Bird had been the 6th pick of the 1978 draft as a junior-eligible, and the Celtics waited a full year for him to finish at Indiana State. In June 1979 he signed for 5 years and $3.25 million, about $650,000 a season, the richest rookie contract in sports history at the time.

In his first game he played 28 minutes and finished with 14 points, 10 rebounds and 5 assists. He also took one 3-pointer of his own. He missed it.

The official scorer's report from that night is still around, typed and filled in by hand. It shows Ford 1-for-1 from 3-point range, Bird 0-for-1, and the whole Rockets team 1-for-10, with Barry's the only make. Boston won 114-106, despite 31 points and 16 rebounds from Moses Malone. It was also Bill Fitch's first game as the Celtics' coach. He and Houston's Del Harris each drew a technical foul in the 3rd quarter.

That same night, across the country in San Diego, another rookie named Magic Johnson scored 26 points in his first NBA game.

What happened next

The trial worked, though it took the league a long time to notice. In 1979-80, NBA teams averaged 2.8 3-point attempts a game. Ford made 70 of his 164, a .427 percentage that was 2nd in the league. San Diego's Brian Taylor made the most, 90.

The Celtics, who had gone 29-53 the year before, went 61-21. That 32-game improvement was the biggest one-season turnaround in NBA history at the time. Bird won Rookie of the Year, 63 voting points to Magic's 3, and a year later Bird and Ford won the 1981 championship together.

Bird went on to win the NBA's first 3 Three-Point Shootouts, from 1986 to 1988. Ford became the Celtics' head coach in 1990 and won 222 games in 5 seasons. He died on Jan. 17, 2023, at 74.

As for the gimmick: in 2024-25, NBA teams averaged 37.6 3-point attempts a game, a record. That's 13 times as many as Ford's team shot in that first season. If you want to read about another Celtics night that didn't go the way anybody planned, here's the day Boston pulled Bob Cousy's name out of a hat.

Do you remember when the 3-pointer was a novelty? Tell us in the comments.