The confetti had barely been swept off the Madison Square Garden floor before Las Vegas moved on. Days after the New York Knicks won their first championship since 1973, sportsbooks released their opening odds for the 2027 title — and the new champions are nowhere near the top.
The San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder open as co-favorites at around +250, according to numbers posted at multiple books including Odds Shark and lines reported by The New York Times and Yahoo Sports. The Boston Celtics sit third in the +550 to +600 range. The Knicks? Fourth, at +700 — behind two Western Conference teams and the franchise they just dispatched in the East.
For a team that was a 22-1 longshot when the playoffs began, finishing the offseason fourth despite a banner is a strange place to be. It also reflects a league that simply will not let anyone repeat.
The last eight NBA champions are eight different teams: the Knicks, Thunder, Celtics, Nuggets, Warriors, Bucks, Lakers and Raptors. As the crew on FS1's First Things First noted, it is the longest streak of a different champion every season in league history. Nobody runs it back anymore.
That history is doing a lot of the work in these odds, and it sparked a debate over whether the champions are being disrespected. "I think it's disrespectful to the Eastern Conference as a whole," Nick Wright argued, pointing less at the order than at the gap. "I'm worried less about the order and more about the delta between" the top two and everyone else, he said, questioning whether the Spurs and Thunder are really a clear cut above the field after both were pushed in the playoffs.
Chris Broussard took the other side, suggesting the Knicks should use it as fuel regardless. The champions, he said, should "look at it as disrespect whether we determine it is or not" — noting that the previous few title winners were all expected to repeat, and the Knicks are getting no such benefit of the doubt.
Where the panel agreed was on San Antonio. Broussard made the case that the Spurs deserve to be the favorite precisely because they are unfinished. Their three best players are all expected to take a leap, he argued, and a Finals defeat tends to harden young teams — the same way last year's playoff exit steeled the Knicks before this run.
No one embodies that more than Victor Wembanyama, who is already the betting favorite to be next season's MVP. Speaking after the Spurs' elimination, the 22-year-old made clear the wait is going to gnaw at him. "There's probably 100 games before we can get back to the finals," Wembanyama said. "I don't know how to say it in English, but I'm going to have to hold that inside of me, slow down, wait, and execute for 100 games."
There is one obvious caveat baked into the board: Boston's number is essentially a hedge. Jayson Tatum is expected back for a full season, but the Celtics have been linked to a Giannis Antetokounmpo trade all offseason. Land him and they climb toward the Spurs and Thunder. Stand pat — or watch him go to Miami — and that +550 likely drifts the other way.
For now, the math is blunt. The Knicks are champions, and the market still has three teams in front of them. Given that no franchise has defended a title in nearly a decade, the oddsmakers may simply be playing the percentages — and daring New York to prove them wrong.
