October 12, 1979: the first three-pointer, and the first games of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson
On the night of October 12, 1979, the NBA's new three-point line produced its first basket, Larry Bird played his first NBA game and Magic Johnson played his — three firsts on one evening.
On the evening of October 12, 1979, the NBA opened its season with nine games. 1
In one of them, at Boston Garden, a Celtics guard named Chris Ford shot from behind a line the league had never used before, and made it with 3:48 left in the first quarter. 23 It was the first three-point field goal in NBA history. 2
The same game was Larry Bird's first in the NBA. 4
One of the night's other eight games was the first for Magic Johnson, the Los Angeles Lakers' rookie guard. 5
A line on one year's trial
The NBA adopted the three-point shot in June 1979, for the 1979-80 season, on a one-year trial. 6 The American Basketball Association had used one from its first season, 1967-68. 6
The NBA's line sat 23 feet 9 inches from the center of the basket, and 22 feet in the corners. 6
Almost nobody used it. The average team took 2.8 three-point shots a game that season, and the league's most eager team, the San Diego Clippers, took 6.6. 7 Boston ranked second in the league at 5.1. 8
The Celtics finished that season with 422 three-point attempts. The 2022-23 Celtics reached 422 in their first 15 games. 3
The league could not afford to be choosy about a gimmick. The 1979 Finals went out on tape delay outside the two finalists' markets, starting at 11:35 p.m. Eastern. 9 The 1979-80 season was the first in which the league had a cable partner at all, a three-year deal with USA Network worth $1.5 million. 10
3:48 left in the first quarter
Ford's shot came from straightaway. He finished with 17 points on 7-for-15 shooting, and it was his only three-point attempt of the night. 311
Bird played 28 minutes, shot 6-for-12, missed his only attempt from three, and finished with 14 points, 10 rebounds and 5 assists. 4
The Celtics won 114-106 in front of 15,320 people, in a game that took 2 hours 11 minutes. 411 Houston took 10 three-point shots and made one, by Rick Barry. 11
The same night, in San Diego
The Lakers beat the San Diego Clippers 103-102 in front of 8,503 people. 5
Magic Johnson played 41 minutes: 26 points on 10-for-21 shooting, 8 rebounds, 4 assists and 4 blocks. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar added 29 points and 10 rebounds. 5
The two rookies had come out of the same game. Five months earlier, Bird's Indiana State and Johnson's Michigan State had met in the NCAA final, and Michigan State won 75-64. 12 The broadcast drew a 24.1 Nielsen rating, the highest any basketball game had drawn in the United States. 12
Boston had drafted Bird the year before, and the Celtics waited while he played a senior season at Indiana State. 13
What the two of them did next
Bird was named Rookie of the Year and averaged 21.3 points, 10.4 rebounds and 4.5 assists. 14 Boston went from 29-53 the season before to 61-21, at the time the biggest one-season turnaround in league history. 13
Johnson's Lakers won the championship, and he was named Finals MVP as a rookie. 15 With Abdul-Jabbar out of the deciding sixth game with a sprained ankle, Johnson started at center and scored 42 points with 15 rebounds and 7 assists. 15 He averaged 18.0 points, 7.7 rebounds and 7.3 assists in his first season. 16
That sixth game was shown on tape delay in most of the country at 11:30 p.m. Eastern, because CBS did not want to preempt reruns of "The Dukes of Hazzard" and "Dallas." 15 It was the first of three Finals between Bird's Celtics and Johnson's Lakers in the 1980s. 17
What became of the line
The one-year trial never ended. 6 For three seasons beginning in 1994-95 the NBA moved the line in to a uniform 22 feet, and the average team's attempts jumped to 15.3 a game before the line went back out. 67
In 2025-26 the average NBA team took 37.0 three-pointers a game, more than thirteen times the rate of the line's first season. 7
Chris Ford took one three-point shot that night, and made it. Boston took three as a team.
References
- 11979-80 NBA schedule — Basketball-Reference
basketball-reference.com
- 2
- 3
- 4Rockets vs. Celtics, October 12, 1979 — Basketball-Reference
basketball-reference.com
- 5Lakers vs. Clippers, October 12, 1979 — Basketball-Reference
basketball-reference.com
- 6Three-point field goal — Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
- 7NBA League Averages — Per Game — Basketball-Reference
basketball-reference.com
- 81979-80 NBA Season Summary — Basketball-Reference
basketball-reference.com
- 91979 NBA Finals — Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
- 101979–80 NBA season — Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
- 11
- 121979 NCAA Division I basketball championship game — Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
- 131979–80 Boston Celtics season — Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
- 14Larry Bird Stats — Basketball-Reference
basketball-reference.com
- 151980 NBA Finals — Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
- 16Magic Johnson Stats — Basketball-Reference
basketball-reference.com
- 17Celtics–Lakers rivalry — Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
This story was produced automatically by a channel. One sentence is all it takes for Neodrop to keep producing for you.