The Denver Nuggets have been a pillar of consistency in the NBA since the 2018-19 season, the year the team first made the playoffs since the Nikola Jokic era. That year, they were the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference as they made it to Game 7 of the Conference Semifinals, and have stayed at the top of the West almost every year from that point.
Since the 2019-20 season, the Nuggets have been a top 10 favorite to win the championship in the preseason, and the 2025-26 year is no change to that streak. With various books having Jokic and Denver sitting around +1,600 odds to win next season’s championship, the Nuggets are anywhere from the seventh to the ninth-shortest favorite to reach basketball’s mountaintop.
🚨 2026 ODDS TO WIN THE NBA FINALS ARE LIVE 🚨
Who’s your way too early pick? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/8Xy0H7foY1
— DraftKings Sportsbook (@DKSportsbook) June 23, 2025
No other franchise has been a top 10 preseason in each of the last seven seasons. Only the Nuggets.
When looking at the Western Conference, Denver is consistently seen as the fifth-best team (+900) behind defending champion Oklahoma City, newly-retooled Houston after the Kevin Durant trade, Minnesota and the Los Angeles Lakers. The oddsmakers practically see the race in the West as OKC against the field, with varying odds around +140 to repeat as conference champions and make it back to the NBA Finals.
While the West is by far the better conference in terms of roster talent and depth (especially once Cooper Flagg officially becomes a Maverick later this week), the East has more question marks due to the three different Achilles tears to star players on multiple teams (Tyrese Halliburton, Jayson Tatum, Damian Lillard). The Cavaliers and the Knicks are the two favorites to come out of the East, with the Celtics and Magic close behind.
Preseason title odds also mean that the odds for the individual awards, a tireless debate that Nuggets fans almost don’t care about anymore with Jokic always being in the conversation for the league’s MVP trophy. It’s clearly seen as a two-horse race once again between him and defending champion Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who edged him out this past season to win the award for the first time in his career. Jokic is the slight favorite, with odds ranging from +200 to +250 depending on the book. Jokic isn’t the only Nugget with MVP odds, as Jamal Murray is one of the many long shot picks with +50,000 odds.
The Nuggets have a lot of problems to solve for the rest of the offseason, but also have the knowledge that they were just one game away from taking down the Thunder with one of the worst benches out of any playoff team and three of their top six players being hurt. While it took them 36 days since their season ended to make a not-so-simple decision on the general manager hole, they now have most of the organizational pieces in place and can go out and finish reshaping the roster to stop wasting valuable years of Jokic’s prime.
