After the arduous, methodical process of building their roster, the Oklahoma City Thunder finally broke through last season and won their first NBA championship since moving from Seattle in 2008. Although OKC was never truly an underdog, having entered the 2024-25 campaign with the second-best title odds at +675, it's a different story heading into the 2025-26 season.
This year, the Thunder are +200 to win the NBA Finals, far outpacing the Cleveland Cavaliers and Denver Nuggets in second place at +650, according to ESPN BET odds. Oklahoma City is the favorite across the sportsbook marketplace, but specific odds vary, getting as long as +250.
Either way, it's among the shortest odds for a preseason title favorite in the past decade. Since 2014, discounting an unprecedented run that saw the Golden State Warriors as odds-on preseason favorites for three seasons from 2016 through 2018, only the 2021-22 Brooklyn Nets (+240) had comparable odds to those of the Thunder this season, per data from SportsOddsHistory.com.
The optimism around OKC centers not only on its deep, talented roster remaining almost completely impact, but also that most of the players are still young and have room to progress.
"The Thunder had their breakthrough to win a championship at the start of their window and are not laden with veterans or players in contract years," ESPN BET senior director Adrian Horton said over email. "Given that, there is a reasonable expectation that they can continue to improve year-over-year and build around an intact group of stars that aren't aging out or hitting free agency anytime soon."
That said, not every bookmaker is as high on the Thunder. Caesars Sportsbook lead pro basketball trader David Lieberman is among the bookmakers slightly lengthening Oklahoma City, citing a strong Western Conference posing obstacles for the reigning champions.
"I think for as dominant and as prohibitive favorites as they were throughout the season, it was a little surprising to see them not dominate or struggle a few times in the playoffs," Lieberman told ESPN. "So I think while they deserve to be obviously the favorites again and they could improve with the young core that they have, I think there's a few teams in the West that improved as well."
The biggest challengers in the minds of bettors and bookmakers alike are the Denver Nuggets, who are aiming to win a second title with perennial MVP candidate Nikola Jokic. Denver is the most backed team by tickets at BetMGM and by handle at ESPN BET, attracting nearly half of all money at the latter. DraftKings Sportsbook director Johnny Avello also notes that the Nuggets have taken "some of the most money" among the teams in the favorites tier.
Per usual, the ever-popular Los Angeles Lakers (+1500) are a top-three team by ticket volume at the major books, with added excitement this season for Luka Doncic's first full campaign with the team. Other top title attractions from the West include the Houston Rockets (+1400), Golden State Warriors (+2200) and Dallas Mavericks (+3300).
Lieberman emphasizes that the longer lines for some of these teams are a result of the brawl that is sure to ensue in the West side of the playoff bracket.
"The odds kind of reflect the fact that it's tougher to make it to the Finals in the West, but the team that gets there probably will be a pretty sizable favorite over whoever makes it from the East."
East is least
The West being stronger than the East isn't exactly a new narrative in the NBA, but the chasm between the two conferences could be even more pronounced for 2025-26. Only three of the top 10 favorites -- the Cavaliers (+650), New York Knicks (+1000) and Orlando Magic (+1800) -- for this season's title come from the Eastern Conference.
ESPN BET's Horton says that the Boston Celtics, who were title favorites entering last season, were "overwhelming favorites" to win the East in previous seasons "because they weren't really going to be challenged until the conference finals." This season, as Jayson Tatum continues to recover from a torn Achilles and the team undergoes a soft rebuild, the Celtics are +3000 for the title, according to ESPN BET odds.
Add in a major injury to Tyrese Haliburton hampering the defending conference champion Indiana Pacers (+8000) and a lack of faith in the previously reliable Philadelphia 76ers (+3300), and there suddenly isn't a readily viable candidate to win the title for the East in the eyes of oddsmakers.
"Almost any East team is probably going to be a pretty big long shot against whoever comes out of the West," Lieberman said. "Just on paper, I think there's five, six teams out West who might be favored over the best team in the East in a Finals series. And that kind of shows itself in the futures market."
Bettors generally agree with the books on this sentiment. At ESPN BET, the Cavs and Knicks, the two most-backed East teams, have just the seventh- and eighth-most handle, respectively, to win the title. DraftKings' Avello notes some long-shot action on the 76ers and Toronto Raptors (150-1), but otherwise notes more overwhelming title attention on the West.
Caesars' Lieberman suggests that bettors could instead look for a long shot to win the conference, like Indiana did last season. This season, that could be the Detroit Pistons (+1100 for the East), who have the most bets at BetMGM and the second-most handle at ESPN BET.
But the overwhelming feeling is that the West will likely be the conference favored to win it all again. ESPN BET has a special market on which conference will win the championship, and the West is -250 to the East's +210.
Planting the Flagg
The NBA has had many impactful rookies enter the league in recent seasons, but by the odds, the expectations might not be any higher than they are for Dallas' Cooper Flagg.
The 2025 top draft pick is the consensus odds-on favorite to win Rookie of the Year this season, sporting -225 odds at ESPN BET. Although the odds vary across the marketplace to some extent, Flagg could be the shortest preseason ROY favorite since at least 2006, per data from SportsOddsHistory.com. Victor Wembanyama was -145 in 2023-24 and Kevin Durant was -200 in 2007-08 before each eventually won the award.
"These awards are driven by narrative as much as they are stats, and the expectation is that Flagg will have plenty of both. Flagg is already regarded as a star coming out of Duke and is certainly one of the biggest stories coming into this season," Horton said. "Add in his expected role on a playoff-caliber team, and he's the clear favorite for the award until we start to see otherwise."
"It's kind of rare for a first overall, generational talent to land in such a positive spot like a good team; you can just sort of step in and not have too much pressure to be the guy right away," Lieberman said. "I think that's, to me, the difference between this situation and most No. 1 overall picks that typically go to teams that are just awful."
ESPN BET has a Cooper Flagg vs. The Field market, and the latter is +185. The only potential challengers who have emerged are the Utah Jazz's Ace Bailey and the Washington Wizard's Tre Johnson, whose odds vary across the major sportsbooks, but get down to only +750 at either of their shortest.
Although Bailey has garnered a solid number of tickets at both BetMGM and ESPN BET, bookmakers note that they are having to keep Flagg short in order to stymie the robust action still coming in on him.
"What can you do? You just put up the odds and they bet," Avello said. "As far as the bettors are concerned, there's Cooper Flagg and nobody else. We will see if that holds up there in the course of the year, but that's what we're seeing right now. He's the darling this year in the league."
Raise the Cup
According to operators, basketball is the second-most popular sport at American sportsbooks behind the behemoth that is football, and the two sports go head-to-head for the first part of the NBA's season. Although that means basketball betting doesn't generally pick up until after the Super Bowl -- Horton points out that the end of football roughly coincides with the NBA's trade deadline and All-Star break -- the Association has been able to attract a fair amount of handle early on in recent seasons, namely due to the implementation of the NBA Cup.
"We saw an uptick in bets on those games," Lieberman said. "There was some genuine excitement; the games are typically pretty fun to watch and high scoring. I think it was a nice idea by the NBA to kind of break up that early-season slog."
He also noted that the NBA generally sees a surge in betting when the season first begins and that it holds the advantage over the NFL of staging prime-time games throughout the week. Premier late-day matchups, particularly involving West teams, do pretty well for bettor popularity, per bookmakers.
In general, the league will look to build on the momentum it has built up, regardless of the time of year.
"This is just a really popular betting entity for us, and we've got a lot of different markets up on it," Avello said. "We're expecting another big year of NBA, because NBA hasn't slowed down since we started."