NBA Finals Futures Odds Update at All-Star Break: 2024 Championship Favorites

The NBA All-Star break is more of the two-third points of the regular season instead of the halfway mark. However, that’s fine by us because we’re always ready for it to be playoff time. Plus, with just about 30 games to play, we have a fairly good sense of where most of the teams stand as they get ready for their final push to the playoffs.

What we’ve seen in the 2023-24 season is a mix of established teams along with ones that have made a surprising run — especially in the Western Conference.

Taking a look at the NBA futures odds, the sportsbooks definitely believe it will be one of the established teams hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy at the end of the NBA Finals in June. But let’s take a look at the current odds and see how things stand as we take a few days off from the grind in mid-February.

The sportsbooks have the Boston Celtics as the consensus favorite to win the NBA Finals. The C’s were also the narrow favorite in preseason futures markets. But after that, there are some big swings depending on the book — so shop around!

Of the top-four teams in the odds, the Celtics look like a solid bet to earn the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference. Boston is an NBA-best 42-12 and six games ahead of Cleveland in the standings. Milwaukee, the other team in the East with odds under +1000, were in second place before firing first-year head coach Adrian Griffin and going with veteran Doc Rivers instead.

The politics behind that move will come out at some point, but right now, it doesn’t look like it was a move for the better.

In the Western Conference, our favorites are Denver Nuggets and Los Angeles Clippers. Both teams are two games behind Minnesota for the lead in the West. Denver is the defending NBA champion, whereas the Clippers — while finishing the unofficial first half strong — have the usual injury concerns with Kawhi Leonard and the questions that always surround James Harden come playoff time.

Of the two favorites in each conference, we are more confident that Boston learned from falling behind 3-0 to Miami in last year’s Eastern Conference Finals, and Denver is a prime candidate to win two in a row.

The Phoenix Suns are at +1400, and with the talent on their roster, that seems like a valid play. It was just three years ago that Devin Booker led his team to the Finals. Now, Kevin Durant has been on board the entire season. The result is the two cooking up plays like this.

Durant posterizing Giannis Antetokounmpo? ‘Nuff said.

The West is deep, but we like the Suns more than the Clippers, even though both teams’ stars can be a bit injury prone. Phoenix is also going through its first year with head coach Frank Vogel, who won a title with the Los Angeles Lakers in the bubble playoff year of 2020.

It’s not often that you can get the second-place team in the East and the top-two teams in the West for +2500 or better. We’ll take a closer look at the dark horses in the coming weeks, but these teams have lower odds for a reason. Remember Sacramento as a 3-seed last year and losing to Golden State in the first round. We also saw the Warriors beat Memphis as a 2-seed the previous postseason on their way to an NBA title.

It’s one thing to succeed over 82 games, but it’s a different story when there’s pressure on the line.

Of all these contenders, the one we have our eye on is Minnesota. Remember, expectations were higher for the Timberwolves last year after Anthony Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns exploded on the scene the year before. But after advancing out of the Play-in Tournament to make the playoffs in 2022, the team finished with four fewer wins last year. They still advanced into the main playoff tournament but were stomped by Denver in the first round.

Now, the T’Wolves are not only winning, but they’re winning convincingly away from Target Center. Among their league-leading 18 road wins was a victory at Milwaukee last week, then on Monday, Minnesota routed the Clippers by 21 in their building. The two stars plus Rudy Gobert are gelling, and Chris Finch is showing why he was a highly sought-after coach when Minnesota grabbed him from Toronto three years ago.

Given Minnesota’s star power, depth, and coaching, we love +2500 for their NBA Finals futures odds.