One game changed the math. Victor Wembanyama's 32-point Game 3 did not just pull San Antonio within 2-1 of the Knicks — it reshaped a Finals MVP race that looked, 48 hours earlier, like a one-man conversation.
At DraftKings, Jalen Brunson remains the favourite at +105, but Wembanyama has stormed up the board to +165, a sharp move from +390 before Game 3, per Sports Illustrated's betting desk. The night's biggest loser was Karl-Anthony Towns, whose number drifted out to +400 from +170 after an 11-point dud. OG Anunoby (+4500) and Stephon Castle (+10000) sit on the fringes.
The numbers tell the story of the series. Wembanyama went for 32 points, eight rebounds, six assists and three blocks on 11-of-18 shooting in Game 3 — the kind of two-way line that wins the award. Brunson also scored 32, but he is shooting under 40 percent from the field across the three games, leaning on volume; he put up 25 shots on Sunday. Castle's 23 points, many of them late, hinted at a Spurs supporting cast that could yet split votes if San Antonio surges.
There is a historical wall behind all of it. In 60 years of the award, only Jerry West, in 1969, has won Finals MVP while playing for the losing team. If the Knicks close out the series, voters will almost certainly hand the trophy to a New York player — most likely Brunson — no matter how dominant Wembanyama looks individually. That single fact keeps Brunson's inefficient nights from sinking his case.
It also reframes the Towns question. On TNT's Inside the NBA, the panel kept circling back to how little the Knicks used him in Game 3 — Charles Barkley pointed out that Towns "has been the most valuable player in the series" and yet New York "didn't go to him at all in the first half." His scoring line cratered, but his value to the Knicks' title case may be less about points than about the man he is guarding.
That man is Wembanyama. Hoops Tonight's Jason Timpf argued that one of the under-told stories of the Finals is how physically Towns has defended Wembanyama, bodying him and denying him clean looks off the catch and off the dribble. By that reading, Towns can have a quiet night on the scoreboard and still tilt the series — exactly the sort of contribution Finals MVP voting tends to overlook.
So the board now reads as a two-man race with an asterisk. Brunson holds the lead on incumbency and the likelihood his team wins. Wembanyama has the highlight reel and the momentum. Towns has the matchup that decides whether either of them gets to lift the trophy. Game 4 on Wednesday at the Garden is the next swing — and on this series' evidence, the odds may look different again by Thursday morning.
