  To date, there have been several detections of high-mass black hole binaries
in both the Milky Way and other galaxies. For some of these, the spin parameter
of the black hole has been estimated. As many of these systems are quite tight,
a suggested origin of the spin is angular momentum imparted by the synchronous
rotation of the black hole progenitor with its binary companion. Using Cygnus
X-1, the best studied high-mass black hole binary, we investigate this
possibility. We find that such an origin of the spin is not likely, and our
results point rather to the spin being the result of processes during the
collapse.
