Up until the 1979-80 NBA season, each made basket from the field was worth two points and a made free throw was worth 1 point. In this era prior to the league’s implementation of a 3-point shot, basketball offenses focused on essentially finding an open shot as close to the basket as possible, and when in doubt, get it to one of the taller players to outmuscle opponents close to the rim.

Without any point incentive encouraging players to shoot outside, the game was played close to the rim due to a general understanding that closer shots are higher percentage shots; shooting more higher percentage shots yields more points. Adding the 3-point line was a move aiming to incentivize a more spread-out playstyle by adding a higher reward for finding open, deep shots—and the different ways that teams, including the world champion Golden State Warriors, have incorporated different strategies in leveraging the 3-point shot in the past decade carries lessons for pharmaceutical asset positioning.

Adding this new type of long-range shot in basketball should (and could) have immediately impacted the fundamental outlook of certain offenses around the league, but instead became stigmatized as more of a gimmick for the NBA to attract viewership rather than as an opportunity for guard-heavy teams to tool their offense around a high reward shot. While the ratio of 3-point to 2-point shots slowly rose over the ensuing decades, it was a slow adoption relative to what it could have been, and no team had found success by positioning themselves as the team that truly tools their offense around the 3-point shot.

This all changed in 2014, when the Golden State Warriors fired coach Mark Jackson and replaced him with Steve Kerr. As a player Kerr was a key role player on 5 championship-winning teams and holds the career record for percentage of 3-pointers made (45.4%), so he 1) had experience winning titles and 2) was a 3-point specialist as a player who understood the value of the 3-pointer if implemented correctly.

Though the Warriors were only 4th in 3-point attempts per game (27.0) in 2014-15, they made them at the highest clip (39.0%) of any team in the NBA, and shot even more threes per game (30.5) in the postseason en route to their first NBA championship win in 40 years. Other teams were also catching on to positioning as the 3-point kings of basketball this season as well, with the Houston Rockets being the team to set the single-season record for most 3PA (three-point attempts) per game (32.7 to beat 28.9) that same season. Despite this record, they only made a percentage of these shots that was on par with the league average. The Warriors thrived off of the 3-point shot not just by deciding to shoot more, but by building teams that could enable them to make more.

At the time of Kerr’s hire, the team’s starting point guard was Stephen Curry, a young top-10 draft pick who could pass and handle exceptionally well in a traditional point guard sense but had the ability to make 3-point shots at an unprecedented percentage when given the opportunity. Steph was a rising star in the league without a doubt, but more traditional NBA offenses did not enable him maximize his all-time best talent. The only obstacle standing between Steph from leading the league in scoring was the unfortunately persistent precedent that NBA offenses look for the closest, “highest percentage” shots.

Instead of considering a team-wide alignment towards 3-point specialization, NBA teams tried to be as “good” as possible at each aspect of team offense. Noticing they had a few other budding shooters to build around Curry, the Warriors hired Kerr, enabling the organization to fully harness Steph’s talents, positioning him as the player who lives and dies by the 3-point shot. Kerr’s hiring was the first step in the evolution of the team’s entire internal focus into getting Steph open 3-point shots. In an era when NBA teams desperately tried to to fill the 1-5 positions with as many All-Star players as they could in hopes of mastering all aspects of basketball offense, the team began drafting and making moves for players who could either shoot the three or have the ability to both rebound and pass in order to get Steph opportunities to shoot the three.

Shifting their entire offensive focus towards getting Curry open 3-point shots is a simplistic way of looking at why the Warriors won in 2014-15; while Curry combined high volume with high percentage from beyond the arc, the team’s positioning of him as the biggest deep shot threat in league history opened several windows for others to thrive. Opponents having to double- or triple-team the smallest player on the court that far away from the basket opened looks for his teammates, whether it be optimal-percentage 3-pointers or open layups close to the hoop.

By circumventing the status quo of trying to be everything for everyone, the Warriors chose to master and own the 3-point shot, and as a result had an offense that became highly efficient in all respects due to the focus opponents had to place on Curry–and therefore off of his teammates–if they wanted to increase their chances of beating the team that would go on to win 4 NBA championships in the next 8 seasons.

Positioning is a discipline that attempts to establish a single-minded company (team) or asset (player) identity that the entire organization can rally behind, with the main goal of developing the organization and its products to live in a particular place within customers’ minds (and in this case opponents’ as well). If the Warriors tried to fit Steph into a more traditional point guard role as the main facilitator who can knock down the occasional jump shot, he’d likely still thrive, but not nearly at the level that he has with a green light from Kerr to shoot more threes than previously acceptable in basketball at the time. Since the Warriors won in 2015, the league took notice, as is glaringly obvious by the increase in 3-pointers attempted per game since Steph’s rookie season and most dramatically after the Warriors won in 2015. This is a prime example of how thinking about what is possible beyond the precedented norms of basketball offense, and they innovated the way that teams get points in establishing some of the most dominant teams in NBA history.

Just as Stephen Curry–and the Warriors–would’ve seen less success if he were drafted by any other team with a likely more traditional offense, pharmacological assets have a higher probability of success if the developing company considers what they want their asset to be in early phases. This consists of making exploratory considerations regarding how the asset’s value will ultimately live in the minds of physicians and patients; rather than trying to portray that a drug is the best for each and every patient, a good positioning hones in on distinct few attributes of the drug.

Whether demonstrated by unexpected blockbuster drugs or by out-of-nowhere champions like the Warriors, it is undisputable that innovative and open-minded consideration of what a product can be have been crucial to the building of historic dynasties in sports and pharma alike.