Developing Holmgren's Knee Is a Regular-Season Problem the Title Market Already Paid For. FanDuel's +260 Is the One Price That Hasn't
Oklahoma City will be without Chet Holmgren for eight to 10 weeks after a small patellar tendon tear, its third starter lost in a week. Most books had already pushed the Thunder out to +425 before the news broke. FanDuel had moved them the other way. We also owe a correction on what we said about his knee on Monday.
October 31, 2026 at 5:36 PM EDT
5 min read
The Thunder announced on Friday night that Chet Holmgren has a small tear in the patellar tendon of his right knee. He had a "biological treatment" that day rather than surgery and is expected back in eight to 10 weeks. He first felt discomfort last Sunday, October 25, the same night Jalen Williams fractured his fibula and dislocated his ankle and Cason Wallace tore his labrum against the Clippers. Williams had surgery on Wednesday and Wallace on Friday. Both will be re-evaluated before the regular season ends.
So Oklahoma City has lost three starters in six days. Eight to 10 weeks from October 30 lands between Christmas and the second week of January.
On Monday, writing about Williams, we said Holmgren's knee, then listed as tendinitis, "may turn out to be nothing." It was not nothing. That piece's conclusion, that the Williams injury was priced about right, stands. The Holmgren line does not, and readers should know we got it wrong.
The market moved before the news. Except at one book
What makes this injury different from a betting standpoint is the order of events. The last public futures snapshot we can find is VegasInsider's board, stamped 1:40 p.m. on October 30, about seven hours before ESPN reported the diagnosis. By then most of the market had already moved hard against Oklahoma City:
| Book | OKC, Oct. 26 (Covers) | OKC, Oct. 30, 1:40 p.m. (VegasInsider) |
|---|---|---|
| DraftKings | +295 | +425 |
| BetMGM | +300 | +425 |
| FanDuel | +340 | +260 |
| Bet365 | not listed | +425 |
| Caesars | not listed | +430 |
| Hard Rock | not listed | +275 |
At DraftKings that is a move from about 25.3 percent implied to 19.0 percent in four days, during which the only new information was Wallace's surgery and Holmgren sitting out with a sore knee. FanDuel went the other way. On Monday it had the longest OKC price of the three books Covers showed. By Thursday it had the shortest of the six, at +260, or 27.8 percent.
An 8.7-point gap between books on the same team at the same moment is very large for a title future. It is bigger than the whole Williams move USA TODAY measured in BetFinder's consensus price (29.6 percent to 22.4 percent, October 24 to 26), which it called the largest peak-to-trough drop of any team since July.
Our thesis: Holmgren's tear belongs in the regular season, where it is a serious blow, and the books at +425 had already gone further than the title market needed. FanDuel's +260 is the one price on the board that does not reflect any of this week, and it is the one to avoid.
Why a two-month absence is mostly a regular-season story
A championship ticket pays on playoff wins in April, May and June. On the Thunder's own timeline, Holmgren is back by early January with three months of regular season left to get fit. That matters less for the title than for the things that are decided before then: the win total, the seeding race with San Antonio, and the NBA Cup, whose group stage started on Friday.
There is also a precedent in his own file. Holmgren missed months of the 2024-25 season with a fractured pelvis, ESPN notes, and returned to help Oklahoma City win the championship. He was then first-team All-Defensive and third-team All-NBA last season, at 17.1 points, 8.9 rebounds and 1.9 blocks a game. A Holmgren who plays in April is still the reason the Thunder's defence travels.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is healthy. The team was 4-1 going into Saturday's game in Houston, per the New York Post.
The case that +425 is still too short
The strongest argument against us is not about the calendar. It is about the knee, and about the accumulation.
This is Holmgren's third significant injury since the Thunder drafted him second in 2022: a broken foot that cost him his first season, the pelvis, and now a patellar tendon. The team chose a non-surgical treatment for a "small" tear. Eight to 10 weeks is a target, and the team has not said what happens if the treatment does not hold. Williams and Wallace may both miss the rest of the regular season. Alex Caruso, Nikola Topic and Thomas Sorber are also out. ESPN's Shams Charania reported on Saturday that the Thunder will no longer sign Ochai Agbaji, the free agent they had lined up after Sunday, so the cavalry is not coming from there either. The depth that went 39-10 without Williams last season was the point of our Monday argument, and it is the thing being stripped out.
On that reading, +425 is not a reaction to Holmgren at all, because it was posted before the diagnosis. Add the tear, and the honest price might be longer still.
We take that seriously, and it is why we are not telling anyone to buy OKC at +425 either. Our claim is narrower. The books at +425 have already priced in a deep, injury-hit Thunder team whose playoff rotation is uncertain, and the Holmgren news changes the second half of that sentence less than it changes November and December. If his recovery slips into February, or if the team's next update is vaguer than "eight to 10 weeks," the long-price argument wins and the market should go further. We would change our view on that.
What FanDuel's +260 might mean
We do not know why FanDuel has the Thunder where it does, and it is worth saying what the possibilities are. A book's price is not only an opinion. It also reflects how much money the book already holds on each side. FanDuel's board on October 30 was out of line with the others in several places, not just on Oklahoma City: the 76ers at +2500 against +650 to +900 elsewhere, the Rockets at +4000 against +1500 at three books. That pattern looks more like a book managing its own exposure than one that knows something about Holmgren's knee.
Either way, the conclusion for a bettor is the same. Whatever you think of the Thunder after this week, +260 at FanDuel is 8.7 points of implied probability worse than the same bet at DraftKings, BetMGM or Bet365 at the last price we can verify. Board prices will have moved since Friday's diagnosis, and we have not found a dated post-news snapshot. Check the current number before doing anything. If the gap is still there, it is the clearest thing on the board.
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