Andrew Ortenberg
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We’re all starved for sports content during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s particularly hard to find things to wager on. Luckily for us poker star Mike McDonald has come up with a creative new prop bet to keep an eye on.
The Canadian with over $13 million in live-game earnings has made a bet that he can sink at least 90 out of 100 free throws. McDonald has the rest of the year to accomplish the feat, and he hasn’t revealed how much he has bet or with who. As long as he can make 90 out of 100 at any point this year, he’ll win.
If he can do it, it’ll be pretty impressive. Only six players in the entire league were shooting at or above 90 percent from the charity stripe before the NBA shutdown.
This is a random sample of what’s happening, he started out shooting ~12/min at <50%, and is now doing ~9/min at >50%. He is fucking tired, out of shape quarantine life pic.twitter.com/KG1C7aQgNV
— Aaron Jones (@aejonesleggo) April 3, 2020
So how is his form? Fellow poker player Aaron Jones posted a video on Twitter of McDonald shooting, revealing he’s getting up to a little over 50 percent clip. Obviously that’s not going to cut it, but he’s got plenty of time to work on his form in quarantine.
A lot of people in the poker world are now making wagers on whether or not he’ll pull it off, and the website Pokershares.com is now offering odds on the prop bet. They’ve currently got it at exactly even, so this should be close.
It could all come down to how much McDonald himself has on it. If he’s bet a large sum as many are speculating, then it’s fair to assume he’ll take it seriously and train pretty hard.
Many people asking about my experience:
– never played organized basketball
– played gym class until grade 9/10
– haven't played often with friends since I was 8 (@blakehagedorn would sit on the hoop which ruined it)
– played once in Vegas 2012, only time I've played last decade— Mike McDonald (@MikeMcDonald89) April 6, 2020
He noted on Twitter that he’s barely played basketball in the past ten years, so on the surface it seems like an uphill climb. However McDonald is notorious for winning odd bets, and a handful of years back he won $10,000 in a bet with Bill Perkins by completing 300 squats in an hour. It’ll be very interesting to see how this turns out.
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