One the biggest regular-season days of the year in the NBA is the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, which was Monday, and it’s also a good time to check on updated NBA championship odds as it’s essentially the halfway point of the regular season – although teams have played a bit past their 41-game halfway point.
Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com
No change at the top, nor will there be all season barring major injury, as the Golden State Warriors are -190 to win a fourth championship in five seasons. They just recently got that much better with the team debut of All-Star center DeMarcus Cousins off tearing his ACL last season with the New Orleans Pelicans. Now the Dubs can roll out a starting lineup of just All-Stars in guards Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, forwards Draymond Green and Kevin Durant, and Cousins. Not fair.
The only other teams under +1000 are the Toronto Raptors (+650) and Boston Celtics (+950). Not much love as of yet for the Milwaukee Bucks at +1200 considering they have the NBA’s best record. Then again, you generally need at least two stars to win a championship these days. The Bucks have arguably the NBA’s best player in Giannis Antetokounmpo, but no Robin to his Batman, so to speak. Milwaukee also leads the league in point differential by far. The Bucks have four winning streaks of at least four games this season, matching the number they had in 2016-17 and 2017-18 combined.
To no surprise, the Los Angeles Lakers (+1800) have struggled since LeBron James went down with a groin injury on Christmas, and now the Lakers have taken another injury hit with starting point guard Lonzo Ball out 4-6 weeks with a serious ankle sprain. Ball had really picked up his game since James went down. What would an NBA postseason feel like without LeBron? We may find out.
The Denver Nuggets (+2500) continue to battle the Warriors for the best record in the Western Conference yet have considerably longer title odds than the Houston Rockets (+1500), Lakers and Oklahoma City Thunder (+2000). The Nuggets can beat anyone in Denver but tend to struggle away from home. When Denver holds its opponent below 100 points at any location this season, the Nuggets are 14-1.
