How one bettor turned $15 into $81,000 with the help of Landry Shamet, who couldn't care less about sports betting

Looking into how one bettor earned more than $81k on a 4-leg parlay.

We’ve all pieced together parlays that have a tremendous payout but relatively no chance to hit. That’s likely what this one bettor did on Thursday night when he was able to bring in more than $81,000 on a $15 NBA bet.

The ticket consisted of four different NBA players (Blake Griffin, Landry Shamet, Justin Holiday, and Daniel Theis) that would need to tally at least 15 points on the evening. Not a single one of the four players average more than 10.0 points per game on the season.

Holiday, the highest-scoring of the quartet (10.0), made his way to 15 points by the opening minutes of the fourth quarter in Indiana’s win over Detroit. His total (17) was the least surprising of all — Holiday had scored 15 points or more in three of the prior seven games.

Next up was Blake Griffin, who statistically was the least likely of the four players to score 15 points. Why? Well, Griffin had been completely out of Steve Nash’s rotation recently until COVID hit the Nets hard and brought Griffin back into the mix. A late three-pointer with 1:13 left simultaneously put a dagger in the visiting Philadelphia 76ers while keeping the bettor alive.

The Theis prop was drama-free. He would only need three and a half quarters to make his way to 15 points for just the third time all season. The ticketholder had to wait patiently into the night to see if Landry Shamet would be the final piece to his $81k payout. For a while, it didn’t look promising.

I can only imagine the stress the bettor felt as Shamet sat on 10 points with just under five minutes of garbage time remaining. Alas, Landry connected on two three-pointers down the stretch of the blowout. And while Shamet doesn’t care about everyone’s parlays, he’s making at least one man a bit wealthier.