Throughout this time of social distancing, the sports world has found different ways to occupy fans. First it was iRacing and marble tournaments, now an NBA game of H-O-R-S-E.
According to juniornba.com, “HORSE is like Simon Says, but with a basketball. In HORSE, you use your imagination to create crazy shots. To begin the game, pick a player to go first. That player gets to do anything they want before shooting. If they want to spin around five times and then hop up and down before shooting, they can do it. They make the rules! If they hit their shot, the other players have to do the exact same thing. But if they miss, the next player gets to make up their own wacky shot for the others to try. Any player that can’t make the first person’s shot gets the letter H. Everyone keeps playing the game and making up crazy shots until someone misses enough times to spell out the word HORSE. The player who does not spell HORSE is the winner!”
The online version of HORSE consisted of eight NBA players, four quarterfinal matchups, two semifinals and the final. Each player competed against one another through video chat at scheduled times, and the player who won moved on to the next round.
On April 9, veteran Utah Jazz point guard Mike Conley secured the title as the online NBA HORSE champion, beating Chicago Bulls guard Zach LaVine. Although Conley’s only personal reward is receiving the title of HORSE champion, State Farm Insurance will be donating $200,000 to coronavirus relief as part of the competition, according to Desert News.
If you missed the exciting games of HORSE between these NBA players, you can go back and watch reruns on ESPN.com.