NBA Championship Odds: Futures Market During 2025 Playoffs

As the playoffs advance, the NBA championship odds table quickly shrinks to just a handful of main contenders.

With the playoffs now down to eight remaining teams, NBA futures bettors are evaluating which teams have the staying power to compete for the 2025 championship.

That’ll be quite the list of aspirants – seven of the eight teams still alive this year also won at least one playoff series last year.

Odds to Win NBA Championship 2025

NBA Championship Prediction: Who Will Win the Finals This Year?

Based on the current futures market, the Oklahoma City Thunder have an implied 36.4% chance to win the 2025 NBA championship.

NBA Championship Odds: Thunder Maintain Dominant Market Position

While there are several contenders in the hunt for the 2025 NBA championship, no team looks the part quite like Oklahoma City. 

General manager Sam Presti has slowly rebuilt the post-Russell Westbrook Thunder with mountains of draft capital, assembling one of the deepest teams in the league with huge athletic talent and defensive prowess.

OKC has the likely MVP in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and leads the league in assist-to-turnover ratio. The Thunder are also No. 1 in average score margin (+12.8), fastbreak defense (11.8 opp. ppg), paint defense (42 opp. ppg), and several other categories.

The Thunder have been considered spiritual cofavorites with the reigning champion Boston Celtics for a large portion of the season. BetMGM is even showing some separation in the NBA futures market, with the Thunder now priced at +135. Boston is +195.

But as good as the Thunder are, they’ve remained a relatively unpopular choice with BetMGM players. As of May 5, Oklahoma City is still just the No. 5 most popular championship bet, trailing a few more public franchises. 

By comparison, the Los Angeles Lakers and Celtics are responsible for more than one-quarter of all championship bets. The Celtics drew heavy action early as a favorite to repeat, while the Lakers have taken massive volume at BetMGM since Dallas traded Luka Dončić.

OKC’s 9.9% ticket share is likely a result of the short return and comparatively small market size. A Thunder championship would be a great result for the sportsbook; BetMGM’s largest liabilities in the futures book are the Lakers, Timberwolves, and Warriors.

NBA Finals Odds: Assessing Value for Challengers to No. 1 Oklahoma City

There is certainly a class of NBA futures bettors that won’t want to bet Oklahoma City this late in the season and at this short of a price. 

For those value bettors, the hunt is on to find out which of the remaining eight teams offers the right blend of return and realism.

The market sees Boston as the top challenger, and that’s not without good reason. The Celtics are deep and experienced; they also benefit from a modern shooting strategy that sinks most opponents under a deluge of three-pointers. 

The Celtics remain the defending champions and the favorites to win the East, so few bettors need to be sold on their merits. But there are downsides to a Boston bet, too. 

For one thing, the +195 return isn’t much better than Oklahoma City. Yet for that short price point, Boston carries plenty of baggage. The NBA hasn’t had a repeat champion since the Kevin Durant Warriors’ era, and that’s partially because of the grindy cost of playing back-to-back long seasons. That cost is even greater for the Celtics’ core, which played additional minutes last summer as part of the 2024 Olympic Games. 

Factoring in health and fatigue concerns, the Celtics are not as strong of a bet this year as they were in the past. Nevertheless, Boston is the most popular ticket at BetMGM among the remaining playoff teams, accounting for 13.2% of tickets and 17.3% of handle. 

Denver, the 2023 champion who survived a first-round Game 7 against the Clippers, is the No. 3 most popular team, accounting for nearly 11% of tickets. 

Cleveland, the only remaining team with at least 10% of the ticket market, is the primary challenger to Boston in the East.