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Not who you're looking for? Others named American Basketball League: defunct professional women's basketball league in the United · first major professional basketball league in the United Sta · semi-professional men's basketball league. It is the fourth
The American Basketball League played one full season, 1961–1962, and approximately one-third of the next season until the league folded on December 31, 1962. The ABL was the first basketball league to have a three-point field goal for shots attempted from longer distance. Other rules that set the league apart from the National Basketball Association (NBA) were a 30-second shot clock, as opposed to 24, and a wider free throw lane of 18 feet instead of the NBA's then-standard 12; the NBA would later expand their free throw lane to 16 feet a few years later in 1964, partially as a means of preventing the dominance of center play there, which is still in use to this day.