Pitchin With Pritch: Three-point shot changed basketball

The game of basketball has changed over the years and will probably keep changing in the years to come.  

At this time, the one change that is still be ing discussed, even though it was made a number of years ago, is the three-point shot, and the three-point line. 

There have been however a lot of changes through the years that have affected the game maybe as much or more than the three-point line.

I can still remember when the lane was only six feet wide and a big post player could do a lot of damage in the lane . 

The first really talented big guy was 6-10 George Mikan and he dominated while he was in college at DePaul and then with the Minneapolis Lakers. 

The player that really widened the lane was Wilt Chamberlain who played at Kansas for two years before leaving college and playing with the Globetrotters for a couple of years. 

Mikan was a good big man, but Chamberlain was a great big man; so the lane got widened to 12 feet. That is still where it is for high school but in other levels of basketball it has different shapes. 

At one time, there was no three-second rule for being in the lane, but the big guys changed all that also. Lots of little changes here and there came about because the post players were getting more skilled. 

The one strange change that was talked about at when Chamberlain was in college, was to raise the baskets up to 12 feet instead of 10. But hat didn’t catch on so I suppose it could be a topic for another time.

The three-point line is another subject all together. It is still being cussed and discussed every year. 

Some say it is ruining basketball, other say it is the best thing to ever happen and the discussion continues on and on. 

When it first was imple-mented there was a lot of opposition to it at the college level and the first distance for college players was 119’4” which made the line at the top of the key fall inside the circle of the free-throw area.

I can’t remember how long it was there but it eventually got to 19’9” and now it is 22’1 ¾” in the NCAA men’s game. Professional basketball has it at 23’9”inches.

At the high school level, it is 19’9” and it got into the rule books in the 86-87 season. 

I can remember my first game coaching with the three-point line and I was not really for the three-point rule. 

It was one of those “Old dogs, new tricks” thing and my philosophy was to get the ball inside or get a nice 10 to 12 footer. 

After our first outing with the three-point rule in effect, I wanted to ban that line from basketball forever and never discuss it again. 

We were at Holyoke and I think we were something like 2-25 and I had players catching passes and looking down to see where there were and backing up to get behind the line and then missing the shot most of the time. 

I eventually was OK with the shot but we had to have a very serious talk about who would shoot them, when they shoot them, and always time and situation was to be taken into consideration. 

Even today, sometimes a two-point goal will hurt the other team as much as a three but a miss at any distance gives the other team a chance to cut into a lead or maybe get a lead. 

Through the years we got better at it and we had some very good shooters by the time I retired for good. Even with good three-point shooters, I wanted the ball inside. 

I think some coaches get all caught up in how many 3-point shots their team makes. 

I can remember after one game the opposing coach was pretty happy as he told me they had just set a school record by making 17 three-pointers against us. 

I congratulated him and mentioned that we had made 41 two-pointers. 

I was an English teacher but I did know enough math to figure out that 82 points was more than 54. 

Plus we shot twice as many free-throws as they did. 

Today it does seem like with teams, it is either the three-point attempt or a dunk and I still like the chances of the teams that actually play with post people, but players like the run-and-gun game and a lot of coaches seem to like that approach also. 

The game changes, but it doesn’t mean you have to like all the changes!