Does OKC Still Offer Betting Value for the NBA Championship?

In this (still very) early part of the 2025/26 NBA season, it’s quickly become apparent that the reigning champions, the Oklahoma City Thunder, have picked up from where they left off back in June. OKC has made a thunderous start to the season, looking locked in at the top of the Western Conference. 

Of course, the thing is, everyone expected the champions to be in this position. Back in early October, when sports platforms were laying out their predictions for the season, you would be hard-pressed to find anyone suggesting that OKC would face a difficult campaign. Sure, there were some pundits picking this team or that, but the vast majority picked OKC as the team to beat. 

OKC a hot favorite to retain

As you might imagine, that was also the case with the betting markets. OKC started the season as the clear favorite for the NBA Championship, and there is little evidence to suggest that is going to change anytime soon. Yet is there betting value in backing this talented team to repeat? Or should bettors look elsewhere, perhaps to other teams, or simply concentrate on individual NBA game lines and odds offered by DraftKings Sportsbook instead? 

To explain our reasoning, OKC is currently priced at around +200 to win the NBA Championship. It does vary from sportsbook to sportsbook, but you can consider that price somewhere around the median. It’s a fraction shorter than what the team was priced at on the eve of the new season in October, thus anyone who placed their NBA Championship bet preseason will feel comfortable with their decision. 

If we look at those odds, though, with regard to implied probability, we can see that it gives the Thunder a percentage chance of 33.3% of winning it all next June. A one-in-three shot will feel perhaps wrong to proponents of the best team in the league right now, but it is a long, long road to the Playoffs next year. 

The best laid plans can suddenly be derailed 

Indeed, those with supreme confidence that the OKC will triumph again would do well to realize that unfortunate events can change everything in an instant. What if, hypothetically speaking, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander suddenly suffered a season-ending injury? Nobody will want that to happen, but it does occur; just ask Boston Celtics fans about how their hopes went up in smoke last season when Jayson Tatum got injured. 

On the other hand, there is perhaps an argument that no team has really emerged as the best of the rest yet. Certainly, there are no teams that have matched the OKC’s start, nor have the swirling buzz around them as champions in waiting. In the betting markets, you have the likes of the Denver Nuggets, New York Knicks, and Cleveland Cavaliers coming after the OKC. They have all made decent, if not spectacular, starts to the season. 

However, you might argue that some bettors will be looking further down the markets to those teams who have started well but still retain long odds. You can put the Chicago Bulls and San Antonio Spurs in that category. Both teams had 5-0 starts to the season. The Spurs can be found at odds of +4000, whereas the Bulls have huge odds of over +10000 for the NBA Championship. Highly unlikely, sure, but some will see it as a worthy risk-versus-reward scenario. 

And that, surely, is the rub. Sports always make sense in hindsight. In June 2026, we might look at the OKC being crowned again, thinking that it was so obvious. Yet, if things go off the rails slightly – and it can happen to even the great teams – bettors will be looking at those odds available right now for the OKC, and they are going to look very short.