The NBA has not had a back-to-back champion since 2017-18, when the Golden State Warriors won two straight titles. Since then, seven different teams have raised the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy at the end of the NBA season. Last year, the Oklahoma City Thunder won their second title in franchise history. The championship was the team’s first since the team was the Seattle Supersonics in 1979. The Thunder are currently the betting favorites to win the 2026 NBA title.
The Thunder took home the 2025 title with a seven-game series win over the Indiana Pacers. With the 2025-26 NBA season reaching its halfway point, we look at the betting odds, picks, and predictions for the 2026 NBA championship.
The Oklahoma City Thunder have played 43 games this year. The team has the best record in the NBA, going 36-8. The team’s winning percentage is .818, which is only slightly behind the .829 the club finished with in 2024-25. The Thunder have an impressive 20-2 home record, while going 16-5 on the road. They have lost back-to-back games twice this season.
The Thunder entered the 2025-26 season with high expectations and has delivered. A lot of the team’s success comes down to management, as almost all of the players from last year are on the court for this season’s title defense. The team’s 13 top players in minutes per game are all signed for this year. That includes the team’s best players, reigning NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams, and Chet Holmgren. Unfortunately, the club is once again without Nikola Topić, the 12th pick in the 2024 Draft. Topić missed last season with an ACL injury and is currently out recovering from chemotherapy after being diagnosed with testicular cancer at the beginning of the season. The club’s 2025 top pick (No. 18), Thomas Sorber, is out for the year with an ACL injury.
Gilgeous-Alexander is the No. 2 player in the NBA in scoring with 31.8 points per game, which is just a little lower than his career best 32.7 from last season, when he led the league. Meanwhile, Holmgren is the best rebounder on the team, while averaging 17.8 points per game.
If OKC can stay healthy, they will be hard to beat.
The 2022-23 NBA champs, the Denver Nuggets, finished the 2024-25 season with the fourth-best record in the West (50-32). The Nuggets then took the Thunder to seven games in the conference semifinals. That playoff run came after the team fired coach Michael Malone and general manager Calvin Booth with three games remaining in the regular season. New head coach David Adelman now has a full season to try to get the Nuggets back to the top in the West.
Adelman has the Nuggets in third place in the Western Conference with a 29-14 record. More important than Adelman, though, is the play of Nikola Jokić, who became the third NBA player to average a triple-double over a season last year. The three-time NBA MVP finished the 2024-25 season with averages of 29.6 points, 12.7 rebounds, and 10.2 assists per game. This year, Jokić is averaging 29.6 points, 12.2 rebounds, and 11 assists per game.
When Jokić left the lineup in late December with a knee injury, the team’s young players stepped up in his absence and kept the Nuggets near the top of the conference. Denver is 7-4 since Jokić was hurt. As of this writing, the Nuggets’ star has resumed on-court workouts. He is expected back later this month or in early February.
The Nuggets’ big signing in the offseason, Cameron Johnson, was averaging 11.7 points per game before a knee injury knocked him out of the lineup in late December.
When the preseason odds were announced, the San Antonio Spurs were not among the betting favorites to be in the mix for the Western Conference title, let alone the NBA championship. Well, 42 games into the season, the Spurs are in second place in the West with a 29-13 record and looking like they might give the Thunder a test for the title, having won three of four games against Oklahoma City this year.
The Spurs finished last year with a 34-38 record. The team has not made the playoffs since 2018-19. That the Spurs are sitting in the No. 2 spot in the conference with De’Aaron Fox, Victor Wembanyama, and No. 2 pick Dylan Harper all missing time shows that the club has made the leap to contender status this year.
With two of the best players on the team being 22 or younger, this looks like the year the Spurs turn things around.
Wembanyama leads the team in scoring (24.5) and rebounds (10.9), while Stephon Castle is tops in assists (7.0) and steals (1.3).
With the way the Oklahoma City Thunder have played this year, they are the team to beat. The betting pick is that the Thunder will repeat as NBA champions in 2025-26.
When it comes time to make your NBA picks, you will find that everything you need to know about NBA betting is right here at Vegas Betting, including our look at the 2025-26 NBA Eastern Conference betting futures. For those looking to make a play with futures bets on the outcome of the NBA finals, Vegas Betting is an all-inclusive site ready to provide you with every tidbit of information that will make you an informed NBA bettor.
