- Oklahoma City (-600) remains a huge favorite to win the NBA Finals.
- The popular โThunder In Fiveโ prediction is still available at +190.
Virtually no one was giving the Indiana Pacers much of a chance to win the 2025 NBA Finals.
Then, they won Game 1, stealing home court advantage for the championship series. Theyโre now 4-0 in series-opening games during these playoffs despite mostly playing against higher-seeded teams.ย
Can Indiana really make this a series? Or is this young Oklahoma City team right to play as one of the biggest Finals favorites in the history of the league?
Your answer may reveal a lot about your willingness to bet the final futures market of the season.
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Based on the current futures market, the Oklahoma City Thunder have an implied 85.7% chance to win the 2025 NBA championship.
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Indiana has made a habit of staging impossible comebacks, capped by a last-second shot from Tyrese Haliburton that puts the Pacers over the top. Indiana nabbed series-flipping wins against Cleveland, Boston, and now Oklahoma City using that formula.
The key difference in the Finals is that both Boston and Cleveland were dealing with multiple injured players. That not only meant they werenโt their best selves, but it was an especially damaging outcome against Indiana โ a deep team that plays quickly and frantically.
While the Pacersโ Game 1 comeback was arguably their strangest and most impressive playoff win of the year, Iโm skeptical that itโs repeatable in this series.ย
I still donโt know what Indianaโs path to winning multiple games looks like against the Thunder. The Pacers need so much transitional offense to outscore the Thunder in these games.ย
Could the Thunder deliver a road clunker, as they sometimes have during these playoffs? Perhaps. Itโs a young team that has more pronounced home/road splits than a typical champion, so that wouldnโt be surprising.
That said, Iโm betting that the Thunder had their attention sharply focused for them after the Game 1 giveaway last week, and so Iโm betting on at least one OKC win in Indiana. At worst, the Thunder should return home next week with home-court advantage recovered and the momentum recaptured.ย
On principle, I canโt recommend bettors lay six bucks with the Thunder in a 1-1 series. Game 3 sides and spreads are more interesting, as is the Thunder-in-5 exacta, which is available after Game 2 for +190.
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