(Bloomberg) -- Sixty-four-year-old Ed Palubinskas would love to face the world’s best basketball players as Atlantic City’s Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa turns to the sport to help lure customers.
“I hope LeBron James joins, are you kidding me?” said Palubinskas. “It’s not even a contest.”
The casino on March 21 will introduce skill-based gaming, recently approved by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement, in the form of a free-throw contest. The winner takes home at least $5,000.
National Basketball Association members are by
contract barred from joining non-league basketball events, which is probably doing them a favor. The Detroit Pistons’ Jodie Meeks has made 98 of 105 free-throw attempts this season for a league-leading .933 percentage. Steve Nash is the career leader at .904, while four-time league Most Valuable Player James has a .746 career average. Palubinskas says he has missed three shots in 18 years of competitions.
“I’m a 99.3 percent shooter for 30 years,” Palubinskas, a native of Canberra, Australia, who lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said in a phone interview. “If you’re a 92 percent or 95 percent shooter, you might as well not show up.”
With a $20 entry fee, participants will have 90 seconds to take 15 free throws, with 13 balls worth one point and two different-colored balls worth two for a total of 17 possible points. The top 64 scorers will advance to the next round, from which 16 finalists will emerge. Those shooters then will be randomly placed in brackets and will compete head-to-head using the same format. Second place wins at least $3,000, while third-and fourth-place take home at least $1,000.

300 Entrants

About 300 people have registered since the event was announced Feb. 13, according to Joe Lupo, the Borgata’s senior vice president of operations. A maximum of 1,000 can enter and 500 are needed for the casino to break even. Any proceeds will add to the top four finishers’ winnings, with the casino not taking a percentage.
“We want to introduce the Borgata to a different person,” Lupo said in a phone interview. “We weren’t looking at this as a money maker, rather a learning experience from a regulatory standpoint, from a demographic standpoint.”
With growing competition from states such as Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware, four of Atlantic City’s 12 casinos closed in 2014. The state’s casino revenue dropped to $2.9 billion last year from $5.2 billion in 2006.
Atari Comeback?
The change in rules will allow the Borgata eventually to offer gaming that ties the video-game skills of young adults to the randomness of slot machines. Using Atari Inc.’s 1979 game Asteroids as an example of what casino floors might someday house, the more things players blow up, the more pulls they’d get on the slot machine, Lupo said.
Because of a lag in technology available to offer such games, the Borgata decided a free-throw contest would be a good way to test the new regulations and to promote the casino during college basketball’s annual tournaments.
Since disclosing the plan, Lupo said he’s received several inquiries about holding other events, such as a chess tournament and a baseball competition. The Borgata plans to host physical-skill events periodically, perhaps some outdoors, he said.
“It will be interesting to see how many people in the tournament will play casino games, dine and get hotel rooms,” Lupo said.
Palubinskas, who played basketball for Australia at the 1972 and 1976 Olympics, where he was the leading scorer in Montreal, won’t be the only free-throw expert in attendance.

Speed Merchant

Bob Fisher, a shooting instructor from Centralia, Kansas, has also registered. Fisher, who has broken more than a dozen world records, said his particular skill is speed. Among his Guinness World Records is the most free throws made in an hour - - 2,371.
“Even though it is not my specialty, this is too good to pass up,” Fisher said in an e-mail.
The record for consecutive free throws made is 5,221, set in 1996 by Ted St. Martin. The NBA record, set by Micheal Williams over two seasons in 1993, is 97.
“The most I’ve made without a miss is 2,118, but it was in practice,” said Rick Rosser, a 55-year-old from McCalla, Alabama, who also is planning to make the trip to Atlantic City. “For 10 years, when I went to the gym I had to make 100 in a row before anything else.”

Rare Chance

Free-throw shooting tournaments of this magnitude are rare, said Rosser, who has won two trips to Disney World, a satellite dish and tickets to other events in past competitions.
“It’s close to $5,000 in all of the contests, so this would be the whole thing in one afternoon,” he said.
Palubinskas, who’s worked as a shooting consultant for NBA players such as Dwight Howard, was a third-round NBA draft pick in 1974, though he didn’t play in the league.
He said in an e-mail that he’s also a sports artist, designing graphics for gymnasiums. Palubinskas ended the correspondence with a reminder of his Atlantic City plans.
“Best swishes,” he said.