NBA Championship Odds: Futures Market for 2024 Finals

The regular season is over, and the playoffs are underway. That means it’s time to get serious about handicapping the NBA championship odds market. 

Fortunately, I’ve got the updated odds table below, plus a full market breakdown to help you consider what kind of futures position you want to establish in the exploding NBA odds market. 

Here are the latest odds movement in BetMGM’s online sportsbook, as of April 24.

Odds to Win NBA Championship, 2024

NBA Championship Odds: Celtics, Nuggets On Finals Collision Course

The Celtics and Nuggets have been the top favorites for the 2024 NBA championship since the market opened last June, attracting a high volume of tickets and an even higher volume of money.

Every NBA season has title favorites. But this season, Boston and Denver have gone beyond just the typical favorite status, dominating their conferences and attracting huge ticket counts and handle volume.

At -250, Boston is now a big, odds-on favorite to win the East. Denver (+110) is a smaller favorite in the Western Conference odds table, but only because the West is perceived to have more potential top-end contenders. The Clippers have the best veteran core of any team; the Suns have thermonuclear offense; the Thunder have incredible depth; the Timberwolves topped the standings for most of the regular season. The Mavericks have the best record in the NBA over the final month of the regular season. The Lakers have the indefatigable LeBron James. 

The fact that Denver is still a considerable favorite with so many capable teams in the conference says all you need to know about the strength of the Nuggets.

As a result, BetMGM’s top two championship liabilities are – you guessed it – the Nuggets and Celtics.

Celtics, Nuggets Have Become Overwhelming Favorites

The fact that the top two teams in the table represent such a big liability is a bit unusual. While favorites do typically collect large ticket counts, raw financial liability often falls to trendy underdogs with rich odds that attract a healthy minority of bettors.

Consider the Cavaliers, who are currently +5000 at BetMGM. Cleveland has good defense, a go-to late-game scorer, and a manageable path to the second round of the playoffs. 

This is exactly the kind of team that NBA futures bettors might buy simply for the sake of value, even if the Cavaliers are clearly not better than Boston. 

With a hefty return like +5000, Cleveland profiles as a team that could carry a hefty liability at an online sportsbook like BetMGM. Large liabilities with wire-to-wire favorites like Boston and Denver only happen when a massive portion of the market backs those top one or two teams.

But indeed, with the playoffs now underway, Boston and Denver represent a combined 34% of all tickets and 54.2% of all handle. Sharps like them. Squares like them. Everyone likes them.

NBA Playoff Odds: Top Challengers for 2024 Championship Beyond Nuggets, Celtics

With the playoffs now underway and first-round series evolving fast, the NBA betting market has settled on a second grouping of primary championship challengers. They are:

• Oklahoma City Thunder (+1400)
• Dallas Mavericks (+1600)
• Minnesota Timberwolves (+1600)
• New York Knicks (+1600)
• Los Angeles Clippers (+1800)
• Milwaukee Bucks (+2000)

No other remaining team is shorter than +4000. Of these six teams, only five of them can advance to the conference semifinals, as the Mavericks and Clippers are head-to-head in the opening round. 

According to the table, the top challenger is Oklahoma City. And while modern analytics do project the Thunder as one of this season’s top teams, NBA history says a deep run from Oklahoma City is unlikely. It’s a very young team with virtually no playoff experience and a noticeable lack of size in the frontcourt. Less than 5% of all tickets were on OKC as of April 22. 

Dallas closed the regular season as the hottest team in the league but was a total no-show in its Game 1 showdown with the Clippers.

Both the Bucks and the Clippers are dealing with potentially significant injuries to major contributors. Giannis Antetokounmpo is recovering from a calf injury sustained right before the playoffs started; Kawhi Leonard is dealing with knee inflammation and has a troubling history of lower-body injuries and missed postseason games.

If you believe either player can make a meaningful recovery, this could be a potent window to buy low on the appropriate team. Otherwise, it’s difficult to buy either ticket.

That leaves the Knicks in the East and the Timberwolves in the West as potential challengers to the Boston/Denver orthodoxy.

In New York, the Knicks have a certified playmaker in Jalen Brunson and a gritty style of defense. They lead all playoff teams in rebounding. The home-court advantage at MSG with a contending Knicks team appears to be off the charts.

As for Minnesota, a deeper look at the team is required. Minnesota has little playoff success to speak of since its appearance in the league in 1989. The Timberwolves may invite a kind of reflexive dismissal in some betting circles because of their lack of high-level success. 

But Minnesota has the No. 1 defensive rating in the NBA and a potential alpha in Anthony Edward who is drawing Michael Jordan comparisons. Bettors were quick to make the Suns a pre-flop series favorite for Minnesota’s first-round series, but the Timberwolves are taking a 2-0 series lead to Phoenix this week. Their size gives them a real chance to challenge Denver, who they were 2-2 against this season. 

Minnesota is a real title contender and should not be written off so easily. 

NBA Finals Odds: How Public Championship Targets Have Fared

By now, you already know about the huge volume of bets that BetMGM users have on Denver and Boston. Those two teams have been popular betting targets because of their consistency, high-level play, and recent history.

Beyond the two most obvious championship contenders, though, it’s actually been a pretty rough year for public NBA futures.

BetMGM’s third most popular team, the Phoenix Suns, accounts for almost 9% of all bets. But Phoenix has dropped to +5000 in the table after going down 0-2 to Minnesota.

The fourth-most bet team is the Lakers, who account for 7% of all BetMGM tickets. The Lakers have championship potential with James and Anthony Davis but drew a difficult rematch with Denver in the first round of the playoffs. 

The Clippers are the fifth-most popular team at BetMGM with 5.2% of all tickets; they’ve already surrendered home-court advantage to Dallas after two games. 

Milwaukee and Golden State have each drawn about 4% of all championship tickets; the Warriors failed to make the playoffs, and the Bucks may struggle to dispatch the Pacers in the first round without a healthy Antetokounmpo.