Oddsmakers have Nuggets as massive favorites to win West

The Denver Nuggets have ended up in an amazing position after a wild weekend of NBA play and oddsmakers are proving just how good the Mile High City crew has it.

The bookmakers published their odds for the NBA Playoffs and who in the West will make it to the NBA Finals and the Nuggets are massive favorites. No, Denver does not have the No. 1 seed but with No. 2 and has way more experience than the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder. OKC’s odds are actually tied with Minnesota’s for the second-shortest to win the Western Conference. All of the Nuggets, Thunder and Timberwolves finished within a win of each other.

The Thunder haven’t won a playoff series since 2016 and the Wolves haven’t moved past the first round since 2004. Denver on the other hand is coming off a championship run and the models and money still love the team. Sure everyone has had their injuries including Karl Anthony-Towns missing big time late recently, but it does seem notable that Denver almost outright won the west in the regular season with Jamal Murray missing a quarter of the team’s games. Now fully healthy, the Nuggets are the favorites to get back to the NBA Finals.

Nuggets lead odds for NBA’s West

Nuggets: +135
Thunder: +600
Timberwolves: +600
Mavericks: +800
Suns: +850
Lakers: +1800
Pelicans: +3000
Warriors: +4500
Kings: +10000

The Nuggets scoring the No. 2 seed means they have quite some time before they play again, getting six days off between Game 82 and Round 1. That should give Murray, Jokic, Aaron Gordon and others some time to rest some recent lumps. Michael Porter Jr. recently said the team would rather get healthy ahead of the postseason than stay in rhythm since they were likely to lose it with a week off. MPJ and crew would know, as the Nuggets got many days off between series last season when they sped to a 16-4 run en route to a championship.

While the Nuggets rest, their first-round foe will be the winner of the Los Angeles Lakers at the New Orleans Pelicans play-in game, which will take place on Tuesday. The winner won’t be as rested as the Nuggets and those two teams actually played each other Sunday, where the Lakers won in Louisiana and forced the Pelicans into the play-in tournament. That winner will earn the No. 7 seed while the loser will face the winner Warriors against Kings in a do-or-die game for the No. 8 seed.

Thus the Nuggets path this season will begin with the Pels or Lakers, and then the team will host the winner of the Wolves and Suns.

If it’s the Pelicans in the first round, the Nuggets have only played them once in the playoffs and that was the infamous 2009 series that included a 121-63 Denver win in Game 4. The then Hornets lost that series 4-1. This season the Nuggets went 2-1 against them, with the teams all taking care of their home games. NOLA missed last year’s postseason and has not won a playoff series since 2017-18 when Anthony Davis was their star. The Zion Williamson era has been marred by injuries though the team has been building that past three years under Willie Green. They’ve added former Blazers standout CJ McCollum and got former All-Star Brandon Ingram in the trade that sent Davis to the Lakers.

The Nuggets have beaten the Lakers eight straight times, including a four-game sweep of them in the Western Conference Finals last season. LeBron James and Davis are their starring duo, who have fallen over and over to Jokic and Murray. The two franchises have met in the postseason eight times with the Nuggets only win coming last year to advance to the NBA Finals. This would make for a third-run-in between James and Jokic in the playoffs and it’s a rubber match.

Oddsmakers have Boston as an even heavier favorite to come out of the East, assuming Denver can make it—that would set up an all-time great NBA Finals.