NBA 2025/26: Whose Championship Odds Have Shrunk Throughout the First Half of the Season?

The defending NBA champions haven’t missed a beat. Oklahoma City’s 36-8 record through mid-January has turned the regular season into something that feels less like a race and more like everyone else fighting for second place.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander followed up a triple-crown year—scoring title, MVP, Finals MVP—by steering a team that opened 17-1, even while Jalen Williams sat with an early-season injury, a flex of organisational depth as much as star power. The Thunder entered as the favourites with online betting sites, and they remain that way as the playoffs near.

After being considered +230 shots in preseason, the popular Lucky-Rebel betting site now positions OKC as a mightily short +115 favourite to repeat as champions. And truth be told, they have played like a team that deserves top billing. But the more interesting story lives a tier below them, where a handful of franchises have forced oddsmakers to admit they misread the room.

Because this season isn’t just about Oklahoma City consolidating power; it’s about who crashed the party. San Antonio was supposed to be charmingly ahead of schedule, not sitting near the top of the West. Detroit was supposed to stabilise after last year’s leap, not bully its way to the top of the East. Boston was supposed to be licking its wounds post-Tatum, not playing like a stubborn quasi-contender on the back of Jaylen Brown’s pride tour.

The real story of the championship odds board is how those teams have dragged themselves from the long-shot margins to the centre of the conversation.

Wembanyama Quickens the Schedule

San Antonio entered the year as a “come back in 2028” project, priced around +6600 in preseason title markets and framed as a developmental lab for Victor Wembanyama. Young teams improve all the time, but this isn’t the usual gentle incline. The Spurs are 30-13 and sitting second in the West, already tracking to blow past last season’s 34 wins by a double-digit margin with half the schedule left.

At 21, Wemby is already putting up MVP-calibre numbers—mid-20s in scoring, double-digit rebounds, elite rim protection, and efficient shooting inside and out—and he’s doing it while anchoring both ends. The Spurs have leaned into his mobility by cranking up the tempo, running him like a giant wing in transition, and using his gravity to trigger early offence before defences can load up. On the other end, his length flattens opposing game plans; drives get rerouted, floaters turn into bad decisions, and shooters feel his presence even when he’s a step away. That defensive versatility is exactly what the preseason lines missed, and it’s why San Antonio’s odds have been chopped down into the +1800 to +2200 range and treated like a live ticket instead of a lottery scratcher.

The front office hasn’t panicked and shoved all its chips in, but you can see the pivot: lineups are built to win Wembanyama’s minutes now, not just test his limits. The question isn’t whether San Antonio can be good someday; it’s whether this group is ready to absorb playoff scouting, shooting variance, and all, and still believe this window is opening faster than anyone planned.

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Jaylen Brown Provides the Answer

On paper, Boston’s season should’ve been a gap year. When Jayson Tatum was downed with a torn Achilles in last season’s playoffs, he took Beantown’s hopes of a championship repeat with him. But more than that, he also took their hopes of remaining in contention in 2026 with him to the treatment room as well.

His injury pushed the Celtics all the way out to +6000 in preseason, as opposed to the +400 favourites they were the year before. But instead of crumbling, they have rallied, currently sitting 26-16, sitting second in the East, and about 10 wins ahead of the more pessimistic projections that assumed a soft reset.

Jaylen Brown decided he wasn’t interested in a holding pattern. He’s averaging around 30 points per game, on pace to join Tatum as one of the few Celtics to ever touch that scoring plateau. The scoring binge isn’t empty; he stacked six straight 30-point games in December, forcefully reframing his reputation from co-star to primary engine. When he calls himself the best two-way player in the world, it doesn’t feel like a branding exercise so much as a thesis statement for the season.

Boston is now sitting in the upper echelons of the Eastern Conference and gunning for the second seed against their rival, the Knicks. The bookies have slashed odds on them, adding to their record haul of 18 Larry O’Briens down to +1800, and those odds could shorten further if Brown keeps carrying the load. Don’t write them off just yet.

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Pistons Go From Punchline to Problem

Detroit’s turnaround isn’t a cute story; it’s a regime change. Last year’s 30-win jump from the depths of the Eastern Conference to 44 victories reset expectations, but there was still a sense this season might be about consolidation more than conquest. Instead, the Pistons hit January at 31-10, leading the East by some margin and tracking toward 62 wins after a statement road win in Boston. That’s not linear improvement; that’s ripping the control panel off the wall.

Cade Cunningham is the face of the revolution, and his numbers back up the MVP buzz. The 2021 first overall pick is averaging 9.8 assists per night, second in the entire league behind three-time MVP Nikola Jokic. His 25.7 point average isn’t too shabby either. In Boston, he handed out 14 assists, while the Celtics as a team managed 13, a box-score snapshot of why coaches and defenders talk about his pace like it’s a weapon.

Preseason odds around +3300 hinted at upside but didn’t fully buy this all-out assault on the Eastern Conference, and even now the market has been slow to treat them like a true contender. They are still way out at +1800, longer odds than both the Celtics and the Knicks, teams below them in the standings. But Detroit is a city that thrives on the underdog tag, and they will be aiming to upset the odds all the way to a first championship since 2004.

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