The start of the NBA season is just weeks away, and we’ve got you covered with how to bet every single team in the NBA to get started. Here’s a guide to every NBA win total, with this entry on the…
Oklahoma City Thunder
Win Total: 56.5/57.5 | Moore's Projection: 62.4
Bet/Lean/Pass: To Win Northwest Division (-120 via BetRivers)
Handicap
This is an insanely high number — especially for a team this young. Teams with totals this high go under way more often than over, as you'll see in our trends.
But the basketball side screams over and an absolutely elite regular-season team.
Here's how you rack up wins in the NBA: Play disciplined, smart basketball and be prepared with effort as many nights as you can. Beat the teams worse than you at a high rate, win at home, and find edges vs. the division teams you play more than the other teams. Finally, manage the standard injury problems every team faces by having redundancy built into your roster and beat the matchup problems every team faces with a roster of positional flexibility.
This might all sound like "be a good team," but there are a lot of contenders who don't often fit those categories well.
The Thunder, however, are all of that, all the time.
The biggest reason to bet the over is their roster redundancy. That can sound bad, as in, "You have too many players who do the same thing." But it's not the case with OKC.
Let's say Shai Gilgeous-Alexander sprains an ankle and will miss two weeks. Oh no, what will the Thunder do? Well, they'll win with a defensive lineup of Cason Wallace, Alex Caruso, Jalen Williams, Chet Holmgren, and Isaiah Hartenstein. Oh no, Chet Holmgren has a knee bruise! Well, now OKC's playing a "small-ball" rotation of Gilgeous-Alexander, Caruso, Williams, Lu Dort, and Hartenstein.
They have wave after wave of long wings who can shoot and defend. They can switch, they can drop, they can zone.
The biggest knock after they added Hartenstein in free agency is that the offense would dip, which is completely ignorant of Hartenstein's offensive game. Hartenstein's a great passer out of the short roll if teams try to double-team Gilgeous-Alexander or Williams. He's a tremendous floater shooter to hit those open dropoffs.
OKC might shoot worse from 3-point range this season; they had the 19th-ranked expected eFG% last season and the third-best actual eFG%. (This is commiserate with another 3-point bombing team in Boston who ranked 18th expected, first actual). But even then, the defense will be elite, they have the MVP runner-up, and you have to expect internal improvement from the cadre of young guys they have.
Another skeptic's take is that they're due for more injuries after being one of the healthiest teams last season.
But there's no real reason to suspect that the injuries will overcorrect either, and this number is obtainable for them even with league average injuries because of the aforementioned redundancy in their roster.
They have the best organization in the league in terms of developing good habits and practices. They have the best roster top to bottom (even if Boston's top six is better). They have the reigning Coach of the Year. They have the MVP runner-up. They have a DPOY candidate in Holmgren and a Most Improved Player candidate in Williams.
It's all on the table for them and they have a lot of outs.
But there's an even better play than the over. Because of the strength of the Wolves and Nuggets, the division price is still -120 at some points in the market. It's as high as -150 in some spots. Even with my having the Wolves at 55+ wins, I still have OKC clearing them by almost five wins. You don't have to bet a historically high win total when you can just bet them to outpace a Denver team that got worse and a Wolves team with a lot of changes to adapt to.
Trends
Since 2011, not including the 2020 COVID-shortened season:
- Top three win totals are 27-14 (including one tie, 66%) to the under.
- Win totals of 55 or more are 22-12 to the under (64%).
- Teams to finish top five in both offense and defense are 7-6 to the over.
How It Goes Over
The Thunder absolutely overwhelm teams with talent, shooting, and defense. Hartenstein shores up their rebounding issues while Caruso makes an elite defense even better. Their shooting stays elite and the team cruises to 60-plus wins.
How It Goes Under
Growing pains with a young roster trying to manage new additions results in more clunkiness than expected and shooting regression puts the offense outside the top five. Injuries take their toll to reduce the margin for error and an incredibly high number proves too much to summit.
Sneaky Player I Like
Cason Wallace shined as a rookie, and while they don't really need him with Caruso, he's still really valuable. Wallace is a great defender and shot 42% from 3 as a rookie. He's an awesome contingency plan and will help them win in the non-Gilgeous-Alexander minutes.
Data provided by NBA.com/stats, Basketball-Reference.com, DunksAndThrees.com, and PositiveResidual.com.
