MANILA, Philippines—Basketball legend and sports icon Michael Jordan has accepted the challenge to do the viral Ice Bucket Challenge, a fundraising effort to fight the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or Lou Gehrig’s disease.
In a video posted on YouTube, Jordan said he was challenged by American baseball athlete Derek Jeter, NBA player Ray Allen and former Manchester football player David Beckham and took the ice bucket challenge to raise ALS awareness.
YouTube screengrab
The “greatest basketball player of all time” dared his former coach and current New York Knicks president Phil Jackson and his teammates from the 1992 Dream Team to donate cash and do the challenge.
In its website, the ALS Association said it has received $ 53.3 million in donations as of August 22.
The ice bucket challenge is the latest craze on social media where a number of celebrities and athletes have buckets of ice and ice-cold water dumped on them while tagging others to do the same.
According to the ALS Association in America, ALS “is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to (the patient’s) death.”
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