The 76ers Are +850 to Win the Title and Carry 37.6 Percent of BetMGM's Money. The Books Open the Season Rooting Against LeBron

Anthony Parenti, BetMGM's senior trader, put it plainly to Covers on Monday: "The Thunder and Spurs are clear favorites to win the NBA Championship, but bettors love the 76ers." Nearly 40 percent of all the money his book has taken on the title is on Philadelphia. The exact figures are 30.9 percent of tickets and 37.6 percent of handle, on a team priced at +850, which implies a probability a little above 10 percent. At FanDuel, Covers reports, the 76ers have roughly five times the bet count and five times the handle of the next most popular team. At DraftKings and Fanatics they are the most-bet team on the board.

That gap, between a third of the money and a tenth of the probability, is the most interesting number in the NBA on the day before it starts. It is also the books' position. Every dollar of it is a dollar BetMGM is rooting against, and on Tuesday night the first of 82 chances to be wrong tips at 7 p.m. at Madison Square Garden.

How +6000 became +850

The sequence matters, because the price did not move on one event. BetMGM opened Philadelphia at +6000 in mid-June, a few days after the Knicks beat the Spurs 94-90 in San Antonio on June 13 to win their first title since 1973, Jalen Brunson scoring 45 in the clincher. Philadelphia then traded Paul George, two first-round picks and two second-rounders to Boston for Jaylen Brown. On July 24 LeBron James announced that he was leaving the Lakers for the 76ers on a two-year contract worth about $8 million, which he called his last decision. BetMGM cut the price to +1000 that week; CBS Sports has DraftKings going from +2000 to +900. Since then, with no games played, the BetMGM number has shortened again to +850, and that last move is the one that is pure ticket weight.

The rest of the board has barely moved. Oklahoma City, 64-18 last season, is +240 at FanDuel, +270 at DraftKings, +280 at Caesars. San Antonio, 62-20 and a Finals loser in five, is +280, +270 and +270. The defending champions are +950 at FanDuel and +900 at DraftKings, and at BetMGM the Knicks hold 5.7 percent of title tickets, less than a fifth of Philadelphia's share. David Lieberman, Caesars' pro basketball lead, told Covers that 76ers money has come in "hot and heavy" since the signing and that star movement, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Klay Thompson to Miami, LaMelo Ball to Minnesota, "spurred some hype surrounding the futures markets." Hype is a trader's word for tickets that do not move the price as far as their volume suggests they should.

The same thing is happening in the MVP market, in miniature. LeBron is +10000 at FanDuel and leads the market in bet count. Victor Wembanyama is the favourite at around +200 at four books; Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is +310 at FanDuel. A 41-year-old on a minimum-adjacent contract is the most-bet MVP ticket at the largest book in the country, at a price that says the book thinks it happens one time in a hundred.

Why the books hold the number

The honest explanation for a 37.6 percent handle share on a 10 percent price is not that BetMGM thinks the public is stupid. It is that the book knows what the tickets look like. When FanDuel's 76ers bet count is five times the next team and its handle is also five times, the average Philadelphia ticket is the same size as everybody else's, which means it is small. Futures books move on the bets that would hurt, and a $10,000 ticket on Utah at +20000, the one BetMGM customer who would collect $2 million, moved the Jazz into second place on the liability list at 3.5 percent of handle. Thousands of $20 LeBron tickets are a liability in aggregate and a signal individually of nothing except that LeBron is LeBron.

The sharper money, by the same logic, is where the handle share exceeds the ticket share: Oklahoma City, second at BetMGM with 7.5 percent of handle, is a team the public is not excited about and the professionals are. A price that shortened from +6000 to +850 on retail volume and then stopped is a book saying it has moved as far as it is going to move for that kind of money.

The case that the public is right

Say the other side properly. Philadelphia's roster, on paper, is the second-best in the East: Tyrese Maxey, Brown and James, with George's contract gone to Boston. Brown was the Finals MVP of 2024. LeBron averaged 20.9 points, 7.2 assists and 6.1 rebounds last season. The Knicks won a title by coming back from double-digit deficits in all four of their Finals wins, including 29 points down in Game 4, which is the profile of a champion that was close to losing four times. If the 76ers are the second-best team in the East and the East's best team was a bounce from being 1-3 in June, +850 for the title is not an absurd price, and the public that piled in at +2000 and +1000 holds tickets with real equity.

There is also a reason to discount the liability language itself. Books tell this story every October; "the public is on Team X and we're rooting against them" is a press release as much as a position, and the trader who says it has already laid off what he wants to lay off. The ticket-and-handle split, though, is not the press release. It is the book's own accounting, and 30.9 percent of tickets on one of thirty teams is not a figure a trader invents for colour.

What settles it is not the futures market but the games, starting with one. DraftKings has the Knicks at -4.5 on Tuesday, total 232.5, and Covers reports 69 percent of bets and 68 percent of the money on Philadelphia, with Fanatics seeing 58 percent of moneyline handle on the visitor. That is the same public on a shorter clock: a +850 team taking two-thirds of the action as a 4.5-point road underdog against the champions on opening night. If the 76ers cover, the futures books will take more Philadelphia money on Wednesday at a price they will not improve. If the Knicks win by double digits, the 37.6 percent becomes the first argument of the season that a title price is not a popularity contest.

Two things to watch that are not LeBron

The season also opens under a rule that did not exist a week ago. On October 16 the NBA told its sportsbook partners to stop offering same-player unders and under-only parlays, the bet type at the centre of the Jontay Porter case, and Tuesday is the first regular-season slate those boards are built without it. Nobody has yet published what that did to NBA prop handle, because there has not been any; by Friday there will be.

And across the country on Wednesday, the team LeBron left opens at home against Golden State with one fewer first-round pick on its roster. The Lakers waived Dalton Knecht on Monday, the seventeenth pick of 2024, with two years and most of an $18.4 million rookie contract still owed, after failing to find a trade partner; Yahoo's account notes that Los Angeles had agreed to send him to Charlotte for Mark Williams in February 2025 before Williams failed a physical. Bronny James and Jaden Hardy made the roster. We do not know whether LeBron's old team or his new one finishes with more wins. We know which one the public has decided on, and by how much.