The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Strategic decision · 1967
ABA changed scoring rules to compete with NBA
The ABA, unable to outspend the NBA, introduced the three-point line to reward perimeter shooting and create a distinct, exciting product.
American Basketball Association
the move
By the mid-1960s the NBA had the players, the arenas, and the television relationships an upstart league couldn't match dollar for dollar. The American Basketball League had already tried and folded in the early 1960s attempting the same head-on competition. When the ABA launched in 1967 under commissioner George Mikan, a former NBA star himself, it needed a way to be a different product, not just a cheaper or smaller copy of the same one.
One idea already existed but had never taken hold: Abe Saperstein's short-lived ABL had informally drawn a 25-foot arc onto its courts in 1961 and awarded three points for shots beyond it, reasoning only that a struggling league 'must have a weapon.' The NBA had never adopted it and treated it as a novelty rather than a real strategic option, leaving it sitting unused when the ABA needed exactly this kind of differentiator.
Mikan built the three-point line into the ABA's rules from its first season, explicitly to let smaller, faster guards score against the NBA's dominant big-man style and to make games look more open and exciting on television — a rule change that cost nothing to implement but reshaped which players and plays were valuable.
why it works
- The three-point line cost nothing to implement, so the ABA could adopt it without needing financial resources.
- It favored smaller, faster guards, a style the NBA's big-man-centric rosters weren't built to counter.
- The NBA dismissed it as a gimmick, avoiding the reputational cost of copying a rival's idea, which let the ABA keep the advantage.
- The rule reshaped which players were valuable, giving the ABA a distinct identity and excitement that attracted fans.
what transfers
When you can't out-resource an incumbent, change the rules of the game to favor your strengths, creating an asymmetry they can't easily copy.
what came after
ABA players adopted the shot immediately and aggressively — Louie Dampier alone averaged over seven three-point attempts a night in 1968-69 — while the NBA publicly dismissed the line as 'a gimmick whose only purpose is to capture the fans' fancy' for over a decade, only adopting it on a one-year trial in 1979, and even then at a tentative 2.8 attempts per game leaguewide in its first season.
references
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