By Only Players Staff
Updated 10/21/24 7:44am ET
The NBA Defensive Player of the Year award market is headed towards making sports betting history and potential league history.
Rising superstar Victor Wembanyama has -170 odds at DraftKings (-170 translates to 63% probability). Based on limited tracking, the award has an odds-on favorite (higher than 50%) entering the season for the first time ever.
Since the NBA introduced the award in the 1982-83 season, all 42 winners have come from a playoff team. However, Wemby and the San Antonio Spurs are expected to finish in last place in the Southwest Division (+2500 longshots). Plus, at +8000, they have the third-longest odds to win the Western Conference.
As a rookie last season, the 20-year-old Wembanyama finished runner-up to fellow Frenchman Rudy Gobert, who won the honor for the fourth time in his career.
Wembanyama is 7’4″ and was drafted with the top overall pick in 2023. He easily led the NBA with 3.6 blocks per game with the next-closest player at 2.4. He also finished eighth in rebounding with 10.6 per game.
However, impacting voters was the Spurs finishing with the league’s fifth-worst record at 22-60 and fifth-worst defensive rating. By comparison, in each of the past 12 seasons, the Defensive Player of the Year has come from a team with a top-three net defensive rating.
Over the past 20 years, only one player has won the award from a team that ranked outside the top five in net defensive rating. That was Marcus Camby in 2009-10 season. The Denver Nuggets ranked 10th, while Camby led the league in blocks and finished fifth in rebounding.
NBA.com only offers net defensive rating stats dating back to the 1996-97 season. Dikembe Mutombo in 1998 won the award after the Atlanta Hawks ranked 13th. That’s the worst rating for any team that produced the Defensive Player of the Year over that span.
Gobert is the second favorite for next season with +750 odds. Fellow big men Chet Holmgren and Bam Adebayo are next with +1200 odds. The shortest odds for a guard are +3000 for Alex Caruso.
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