According to the DraftKings Sportsbook, the Oklahoma City Thunder are overwhelming favorites to win the NBA championship this season at +170, meaning a $10 bet would potentially win $17 in June.
These are very short odds for a future with such a long latency, but it makes sense. The Thunder are the defending champions, and they have started this season even better than last. Through the end of November, they have a record of 20-1, with an average scoring margin of +15.5 that is on pace to obliterate the all-time record of +12.9 PPG -- set by the Thunder just last season. They are worthy favorites.
Behind the Thunder, the teams with the next-shortest odds are the Denver Nuggets (+550), Houston Rockets (+550) and Cleveland Cavaliers (10-1).
It's not until you get into the longer-shot teams that you find the Los Angeles Lakers, at 13-1 to win it all, meaning a $10 bet would potentially win $130. That's a nice return, but only if the Lakers have a legitimate chance to win. So, do they?
I say, yes.
The Luka effect
For one thing, the Lakers are led by one of the consensus three best players in the NBA. Per the DraftKings Sportsbook, there are only three players with odds shorter than 30-1 to win the MVP this season: Nikola Jokic at +140, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander at +170 and Luka Doncic at +320.
Doncic is one of the best offensive creators in the league, for both himself and his teammates. He leads the NBA in scoring at 35.1 PPG, but only 18.2% of his 2-point field goals and 38.5% of his 3-point field goals are assisted. He also leads the NBA in both free throws made (9.9) and attempted (12.3), all of which means that, for the vast majority of the time, Doncic is creating his own high-percentage looks off the dribble.
Doncic is also averaging 9.4 APG and has an assist rate of 42.0%, which means that when he is on the court, Doncic assists on 42% of the shots his teammates make. Between the shots he creates for both himself and his teammates, Doncic is an extremely high usage player. And he has already proven that, as the primary offense generator, he can lead a team to the NBA Finals, as he did for the Mavericks in the 2023-24 season.
However, when Doncic has to carry too much load, opposing teams can strategize to overcome his efforts. If they are disciplined and don't allow him to collapse the defense, it makes it more difficult for him to create easy looks for teammates. And if opponents have talented on-ball defensive wings with the muscle to prevent his back-down and the speed to prevent him blowing by them, they are able to sometimes make Doncic over-reliant on his 3-point shot. Put together, a unipolar Doncic offense has a high ceiling but can be defended into ineffectiveness by elite defenses.
But the Lakers' offense isn't unipolar.
Another rising star
The second option on the Lakers this season, Austin Reaves, has developed into a star in his own right and is playing at an All-NBA level. Reaves is averaging significant career highs of 28.5 PPG and 6.7 APG, but the importance to the team is how he's doing it. Reaves is finishing at an elite efficiency, with a true shooting percentage (factors in 2-pointers, 3-pointers and free throws) of 67.3%. Said another way, more than two-thirds of the time that Reaves attempts to score, he is generating points.
Reaves is also creating quite a few of his own shots inside the arc, with only 35.9% of his 2-point field goals coming off assists. However, 67.5% of his 3-pointers are assisted, which means he sets up his own trey off the dribble only about one third of the time and is set up by teammates twice as often. Plus, Reaves' assist rate of 28.6% means that, when he's on the court, he's assisting on almost three of every 10 shots his teammates take.
Put together, if defenses overplay Luka, Reaves is there as a relief valve that can either set up his own drives, knock down open looks that his teammates create for him, or create for his teammates at a high rate. Reaves' production, efficiency and ability to create are analogous, in fact, to what Kyrie Irving provided to Luka's Mavericks in their 2023-24 NBA Finals run.
Don't forget about LeBron
What could put the Lakers over the top is LeBron James. We've somehow come this far in the article without mentioning the NBA's all-time leading scorer, who has played at an All-NBA Level for an unprecedented 21 consecutive seasons.
LeBron missed the first month of this season battling sciatica, and has only played in four games so far. That's too small of a sample size to give statistically meaningful arguments. But the trends are already there, and they could be the key to making the Lakers elite.
Because while we know that LeBron can (and for more than two decades has) filled the offense creator role that Luka now inhabits, he had also already started learning to fill more of the "secondary role" next to Luka that Reaves is currently filling. What he's done so far this season is embrace being the third option -- a role that he has never before played -- and he is doing it at a high level.
Through four games, LeBron is being assisted on 60% of his 2-point field goals and 100% of his 3-pointers. Both of those percentages are up dramatically from his career norms, and indicate that he has been willing to cede his own shot creation to his teammates. But, while doing so, he is still generating 8.3 APG (vs. only 2.0 TO/game) with a 37.2 assist percentage.
Again, it's only been four games, so don't get caught up in the exact numbers. What's important is the trend: LeBron is willing to play off the ball, take and make open looks his teammates set up, and create shots primarily for his teammates instead of himself.
Gamechanger.
An evolving NBA
The NBA has largely moved beyond the "Big Three Era" and into more of a team-oriented approach, even when built around transcendent individual talents like SGA or Jokic. But if LeBron is willing to sublimate his individual stats to maximize Luka and Reaves, it gives the Lakers the team synergy of today with the talent concentration and leadership redundancy of the best of the previous era.
With LeBron as essentially the leading glue guy, the "others" on the Lakers -- as Charles Barkley and Shaq call them -- suddenly become one of the best units in the league. And with LeBron expending so much less energy on offense, he can lean into being a strong defensive power forward on the other end of the court and help lead that unit as well.
In a historic sense, LeBron could play a similar but larger role this season for the Lakers to what former MVP Bill Walton played for the 1986 Celtics. That Celtics team was largely considered one of the best of all time, with Walton content to play an attenuated sixth man role that supported their all-world frontline of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parrish.
In this case, LeBron would be starting, and he'd be playing point-power-forward instead of Walton's center, but in terms of impact LeBron could be the Walton-like fulcrum that takes these Lakers into the elite.
Final thoughts
At this point in the season, I would say that the Lakers to win at 13-1 is the best value on the board.
According to the playoff version of the ESPN Basketball Power Index, the Lakers would currently rank fourth in the NBA at 4.7, behind the Thunder (10.7), Rockets (8.2) and Nuggets (6.4). But BPI is built in part on the individual production and impact of the players on the team. As the Lakers play more games with their new lineup, I believe they will only improve.
They are tied for the second-fewest losses in the league with four, and are undefeated in the four games LeBron has played. The Thunder are in a tier by themselves, but I expect that the Lakers will settle at, or above, the level of the Rockets and Nuggets.
When I look at the makeup of each team, I believe that the Lakers' core three will be even more effective in the playoffs than in the regular season. I don't believe that the defensive approaches that have slowed Luka-led teams in the past would be effective against this team.
The Lakers lack depth, particularly on the interior, compared to the other three main Western Conference contenders. They will need their team to be healthy for the playoffs, particularly their big three. That said, I would give a healthy Lakers team at least an even chance to win a playoffs series against every team in the West except the Thunder.
Even then, in a series, I would not count the Lakers out. They have a redundancy of shot creation and long-range shooting on the wing that could overcome even the Thunder's elite defenders. In such a matchup, the Lakers could legitimately have three of the four best players on the court for large stretches of the game.
Would I make the Lakers the favorites? No. But they have value at 13-1, particularly when I see little gap in their chances versus the teams ahead of them with much shorter odds. By both BPI and my scouting, I would rate the Lakers as better than whoever comes out of the Eastern Conference.