Spurs Climb to 3rd in NBA Title Odds as Top Teams Maintain Dominance

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The San Antonio Spurs are once again surging in odds to win the NBA Finals, this time after they beat the Eastern Conference-leading Detroit Pistons by double digits Monday night.

Key Takeaways

The Spurs are 9-3 against teams in the top three in both conferences.

San Antonio was given +6,600 odds the day before their season began.

A Spurs championship would mark the largest Finals upset on record.

The Spurs are 41-16, good for the second-best record in the Western Conference and the third best in the NBA. The only teams ahead of them are the Oklahoma City Thunder (44-14) and Pistons (42-14).

San Antonio passed the “40-20” test, which refers to more than 90% of champions winning 40 games before losing 20 during the regular season.

The Spurs were +6,600 to win the Finals on Oct. 21, the day before they made their season debut, according to Sports Odds History’s archive of BetMGM’s odds.

BetMGM is now one of several sportsbooks to list the Spurs at +1,000 odds, meaning they’ve gone from a 1.5% to a 9.1% implied chance to hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy. OKC is at +135 (42.6% chance) and Denver is at +550 (15.4% chance).

Prediction platform Kalshi views the race much differently. The Thunder are still at the top of the board, though users have only given them a 39% chance to win the Finals. The Spurs are second at 14%, ahead of the Nuggets at 12%.

Those probabilities translated to betting odds would look like this:

Spurs, Wembanyama surging

The Spurs’ continued ascent in NBA Finals winner odds is well earned. They are 9-3 against the top three teams in each conference (Thunder, Pistons, Houston Rockets, Boston Celtics, and New York Knicks) and beat the defending champions in four of their five matchups.

They also won the NBA Cup and are two wins (against the Toronto Raptors and Brooklyn Nets) away from going 11-0 in February.

The team’s surge has given life to Victor Wembanyama’s NBA MVP case. Kalshi’s odds list the young Frenchman fourth behind Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nikola Jokic, and Cade Cunniingham with a 9% chance to win.

While he is an obvious underdog, both Gilgeous-Alexander and Jokic are in danger of losing their eligibility for the award due to the NBA’s 65-game requirement for players. Cunningham isn’t close to missing more than the allotted amount of games, but he’s only at a 16% chance at the time of writing.

Here’s how the top four candidates stack up against one another as they continue to battle in NBA MVP odds:

Gilgeous-Alexander (56% chance): 31.8 points, 6.4 assists, 4.4 rebounds, 55.4% FG

Jokic (23% chance): 28.8 points, 12.5 rebounds, 10.5 assists, 58.4% FG, 42.1% 3PT

Cunningham (16% chance): 25.3 points, 9.8 assists, 5.8 rebounds, 1.5 steals

Wembanyama (9% chance): 24.2 points, 11.3 rebounds, 2.9 assists, 2.8 blocks

A potentially historic achievement

A Spurs NBA championship would mark the largest Finals upset on record, according to Sports Odds History data.

The longest preseason underdogs to win since 1984-85, when odds were first tracked, were the 2014-15 Golden State Warriors. Even they were only +2,800.

The closest team since then was the 2018-19 Raptors, who were +1,850.

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Spurs Climb to 3rd in NBA Title Odds as Top Teams Maintain Dominance

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