Wayne Shelton walked into Paycom Center on Tuesday for his first ever NBA playoff game. It was Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals between the Dallas Mavericks and the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Shelton, a single father of one and owner of a real estate appraisal business in Phoenix, Arizona, is “nervous as hell.” Over the past year, he’s become one of the Thunder’s biggest supporters — not for sentimental reasons, but because the team may help him cash the parlay of a lifetime.
Shelton avidly watches and bets on sports, often using multiple screens to keep up with all of the action. However, his method for sports betting isn’t exactly conventional: He largely only bets futures, very rarely dabbling in day-to-day betting.
“I plant seeds throughout the year,” Shelton told ESPN. “I bet all the major sports for all the futures, divisions, whatever. And the whole idea is I’ll invest a decent amount, but now I get to enjoy the entire season as a sports bettor without having to put more money down. I can enjoy what I invested and enjoy every game because they all matter.”
So over one year ago, May 1, 2023, when DraftKings offered him a high-limit, 50% profit boost, he knew he had to take a shot.
Shelton noticed that the Texas Rangers had an outrageously positive run differential a month into the MLB season and, on that day, believed they were a better shot to win the World Series than their 22-1 odds suggested. He began his process of “research” — but for the purposes of this new bet, that term will be used loosely. A family member whose family was “not really into sports” started following the Kansas City Chiefs, so Shelton felt betting a repeat for the reigning champs could be fun at +600.
Then there was the Thunder, who Shelton believed showed potential after a feisty outing as the 10-seed in the play-in tournament. At 70-1 to win in 2024, OKC was the final piece of Shelton’s puzzle.
He packaged the three championship futures into a $100 parlay to build a new futures ticket. The payout: $1.7 million.
“I never bet that high on a future, especially a lottery ticket like this one,” Shelton said. “They gave me a high max and I just said, ‘You know what? This one time, max it out, let’s go.’ [I] never do that. [And] here we are.”
In November, the Rangers won their first World Series in franchise history. In February, the…
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