32 years ago today: Joe Dumars makes 10 threes and scores 40 without a two-point basket as Detroit beats Minnesota

Thirty-two years ago today, on Tuesday, November 8, 1994, Joe Dumars took 18 three-point shots for the Detroit Pistons against the Minnesota Timberwolves and made 10 of them. No one in NBA history had made more in a game. He finished with 40 points without scoring a single two-point basket, Detroit won 126-112 at the Palace of Auburn Hills, and for one night the shortened three-point line belonged to a Bad Boy who had grown into a shooter.

What made the line stranger was how he built the 40. Ten makes from three. Ten makes from the free-throw line. Zero makes from inside the arc. His only two-point attempt was the first shot of the game, and he missed it.

A new, shorter arc

Before the 1994-95 season, the NBA moved the three-point line in to a uniform 22 feet all the way around, hoping to put scoring back into the game. The change lasted three seasons. For shooters who already had range, it turned open looks into invitations.

Dumars was still finding the new paint. In Detroit’s first two games, both losses, he had made one of eight threes. “The first couple of games, I was looking for the 3-point line,” he said afterward. “Now I have a good feel for where it is.”

Minnesota did not help itself. The Timberwolves came in 0-2 and left 0-3. They were not pressuring him outside. “They weren’t pressuring me outside, so I didn’t need to take it in,” Dumars said. “I didn’t even know that I took a 2-point shot.”

Ten makes, no twos

By the time the night was over, Dumars had played 42 minutes and filled out a line that still looks like a typing error: 10-of-19 from the field, 10-of-18 from three, 10-of-10 from the line, six assists, one rebound and one steal. All 30 of his field-goal points came from beyond the arc.

• The record: 10 threes, tying Brian Shaw, who had gone 10-of-12 for Miami against Milwaukee on April 3, 1993.
• The quirk: zero two-point makes. Forty points on threes and free throws alone.
• The team: Detroit shot 46-of-69 (66.7 percent) and 14-of-25 from three. Minnesota went 3-of-11 from deep.
• The crowd: 13,424 at the Palace of Auburn Hills. Quarters ran 32-24, 30-27, 37-28, 27-33.

Rookie Grant Hill went 10-of-11 from the field for 22 points, seven assists and four rebounds. Mark Macon scored 14 off the bench on 5-of-5 shooting. Lindsey Hunter handed out nine assists. Christian Laettner led Minnesota with 24 points and 10 rebounds; Isaiah Rider had 16 and 10.

Chasing 11

Once it was clear Dumars was hunting the record, the Timberwolves tightened up. He missed five of his last six attempts. “It was obvious to everyone that I wanted to get that 11th one,” he said. “Minnesota knew it, too. That is why I knew it was going to be hard to get.”

He did not expect the mark to last. “I look for this record to stand about a week with guys like Reggie Miller out here,” Dumars said. Don Chaney, his coach, was blunter about the shortened line: “With the guys we have in this league, it’s probably too short.”

How long 10 lasted

• ABA footnote: Les Selvage of the Anaheim Amigos had made 10 threes in an ABA game, but Dumars and Shaw shared the NBA mark.
• Broken in 1996: Dennis Scott of Orlando made 11 threes against Atlanta on April 18, 1996, and the single-game record has climbed since.
• Same season, same line: Fifteen days later, on November 23, Utah’s Jeff Hornacek went 8-for-8 from three for 40 points against Seattle — another product of the short arc.

What it meant in Detroit

This was not the Bad Boys lineup anymore. Isiah Thomas had retired. Bill Laimbeer and the bruising frontcourt were gone. Dumars, in his 10th season out of McNeese State, was the bridge to a new group that included Hill, Hunter and Allan Houston on the wing. Oliver Miller blocked six shots off the bench. The Pistons improved to 2-1. The night was a reminder that the quietest Bad Boy had always been able to score, and that the new line had turned him into a volume three-point threat overnight.

He had already been Finals MVP in 1989, when Detroit finished off the Lakers, and he would make six All-Star teams before he was done. After he stopped playing in 1999, he moved upstairs and built the 2004 championship roster as president of basketball operations — the one that posed with the trophy at the White House a year later. The No. 4 jersey hangs in the rafters.

The 10-three night against Minnesota is still the shooting line people reach for when they talk about how far Dumars could stretch a defense. For one Tuesday in Auburn Hills, with the arc pulled in and the Timberwolves standing off him, he never needed the paint at all.