The NBA season has arrived, finally, so let's get to some NBA predictions for this 2023-24 campaign.
I have 10 best futures bets to tell you what my priors are going into the season. This shapes up to be one of the most competitive we've ever seen given the landscape, and that will give futures bettors a lot of opportunities for high and low-end outcomes. Here are my Top 10 futures bets for 2023-24.
NBA Predictions: Top 10 Futures Best Bets for 2023-24
Denver Nuggets
Over 53.5 Wins
Denver lost Bruce Brown and Jeff Green in the offseason and plan to replace them with first and second-year players who may or may not be ready. The non-Jokic minutes were already a disaster last year and the last few years.
The bar is low for the depth. But the bigger problem is what happens in the minutes with Jokic and the younger guys.
The veterans were still huge plus impact players next to Jokic. Last season, if Jamal Murray needed a night off, they would start Bruce Brown. Now it’s Reggie Jackson. Last season, Brown would fill the stagger minutes when Murray would exit to later return in the non-Jokic minutes. Now, that’s Jackson. Just as important, if Murray needs the night off when Jackson goes to the bench, it’ll be second-rounder Jalen Pickett.
Last season, if Michael Porter Jr. needed a night off, Jeff Green could start. Green was a huge negative in the non-Jokic minutes, but the Green-Jokic minutes were still +6 in net rating. The minutes with younger players like Peyton Watson and Julian Strawther on the floor without Jokic might be better because the floor for that is so low. (Denver was -10 per 100 possessions without Jokic last season, a truly horrific team.) But will the players with Jokic and those players be better than they were with a veteran cutter like Green?
Teams with a win total over 50 are 38-22-1 to the under that season. It’s generally a good habit to take the under on these teams.
Denver finished 15th in defensive rating last season, buoyed by their league-best clutch defensive rating. Those numbers are difficult to sustain. Will Denver, coming off a title with championship confidence, look to put the hammer down in January and February? Their defense is still a significant weakness and wasn’t boosted by the departure of Brown (and to a matchup degree, Green).
Teams with a win total of over 50 who finished with a defensive rating rank of 16th or worse are 12-1 to the under.
A worse roster, a middling-to-bad defense, a high win total. It all adds up.
Memphis Grizzlies
Over 45.5 Wins
NOTE: This analysis was written before Steven Adams was lost for the season following knee surgery. I still think the over is the play, but my confidence and projection were lowered after the news. There are many (bad) options for Memphis to replace Adams, at least in terms of depth behind Xavier Tillman, and Tillman was sneaky good last season. But this was my No.1 futures play before the injury, and now it is tied with the third-ranked one below.
Memphis is 11-4 to the over in the last ten years. That’s partially due to small market size and relative lack of star power until this recent team, Memphis, has had lower figures than other teams with similar records.
This season, their win total reflects the upcoming 25-game suspension for Ja Morant. But the Grizzlies are 31-15 straight up when Morant does not play in the last two seasons.
The reality is that the market is overstating the impact of Morant’s suspension and underrating the way they’ve reshaped the team.
Without Morant, their offense slides, but their defense improves, allowing three fewer points per 100 possessions last season when Morant didn’t play at all.
With Jaren Jackson Jr. and Steven Adams back, and after adding former Defensive Player of the Year Marcus Smart, the Grizzlies project as a top-3 defense again this season. Top-3 defenses are 25-7-1 to their preseason win total over in the last eleven years.
The Grizzlies have also expressed an understanding that they needed to improve their 23rd-ranked half-court offense from last year. They added Luke Kennard at the deadline, and the early numbers with him were positive. Coach Taylor Jenkins has also talked about how they’ve overhauled their offensive concepts.
THE TRENDS
- Teams that won over 50 games the previous season and have a win total below 50 are 11-8 to the over.
- Teams with a win total between 45 and 49 overall are 22-18 to the over.
- The Grizzlies are the third best team vs. teams under .500 the past two seasons, winning 70% of their games vs. sub.-500 teams. Teams that win 70% or more of their games vs. teams under .500 have gone 28-24 (53%) to the over.
- The Grizzlies have gone over their win total in every season under Taylor Jenkins.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
MVP +1800
SGA already finished top-five in this category. We broke down all the qualifiers on the last 20 years of winners on our podcast Buckets:
SGA fits within the age range (23-29). If the Thunder exceed expectations and win closer to 50 games, he’ll hit the wins qualifier. His narrative pull will be very strong. And SGA finished 5th last season in MVP voting; this is crucial: the voters have already acknowledged he’s in the conversation. That selection came after the Mavericks tanked out of a playoff spot; Luka Doncic likely finishes fifth otherwise. But SGA is still at that level.
EPM is a catch-all metric widely becoming the standard-bearer among analytics experts. Every MVP winner since 2014 has finished top-five in EPM.
The last nine MVP winners have finished in the top 10 in the season before their winning the award. SGA finished 11th. But many players above him are outside the age boundaries. We have had two winners older than 28 since 2000 (Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash). If we restrict the EPM ranks to between the ages of 23 and 28 last season, the top three are:
Luka Doncic
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
Jayson Tatum
This allows us to get 18-1 on a player set to fill the void as players like Giannis, Embiid, and Jokic elect to focus on championship pursuit, not the regular-season award.
SGA averaged 31-5-6 last season on a team with few real offensive weapons. With Chet Holmgren on board and internal improvement from their good young players, OKC at least has the upside of a breakout season, and a likely consequence of that would be value on SGA at this number.
Indiana Pacers
Over 37.5 Wins
I have the Pacers projected for 45, which might be optimistic. I upgraded them about eight wins over last season’s projection. Their offseason additions of Bruce Brown and Obi Toppin, internal development with Benedict Mathurin, Aaron Nesmith, and Jalen Smith, plus a more concentrated effort to go for the playoffs, will push them over.
Indiana was 26-23 straight up last season when Tyrese Haliburton played more than 30 minutes.
On January 1, the Pacers were 13th in offense and 21st in defense. It’s reasonable to expect this year’s edition to be between 10 and 20 in both categories. They may not be a top-ten offense (though I think that’s their ceiling), and they may not be top-15 defensively. But teams in the teens in offense and defense with a win total below 40 are 16-7 (70%) to the over in the past 11 seasons.
I’m also on the Pacers to make the playoffs at +120, which covers us if they have an exceptional season and finish top six and gives us a shot if they reach the play-in tournament.
Minnesota Timberwolves
Over 44.5 Wins
This number is patently insane.
The Wolves won 42 games last season, with Karl-Anthony Towns playing in just 29 games while trying to acclimate to a brand-new roster construction after the Rudy Gobert trade. Early on, the team was resentful of the deal, which disrupted what they thought was a really promising team after their first-round moral victory loss to the Grizzlies in seven games.
But by season’s end, the team had figured out its identity. They moved D’Angelo Russell and added locker room human vitamin Mike Conley. They were a tough group of professionals. Yes, Rudy Gobert and Kyle Anderson got into it on the sideline and probably won’t be sending each other Christmas cards. But this isn’t uncommon, and if anything, Minnesota has shown a better capacity to get Gobert the ball in situations where he can contribute.
Now, with Gobert back in tow, this assumes no internal improvement from Anthony Edwards, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, or Jaden McDaniels, nothing added by offseason pickups in Shake Milton, and no benefit from getting Naz Reid back who also missed the last third of the season. I have the Wolves projected for 48 wins this season. That puts them close enough to where I have the Nuggets (see above) to place value on the division at +600. Minnesota is a team that the market doesn’t see coming.
Chicago Bulls
Over 37.5 Wins
Chicago won 40 games last season. They return all of their top six players in VORP and six of their top seven in EPM. Billy Donovan coached what is a suspect personnel group to the sixth-best defense last season. There is very clearly an edict from ownership to pursue playoff eligibility if only for the additional revenue.
Chicago has the 11th-easiest schedule this season via Positive Residual, with 13 rest advantage games to only eight rest disadvantage games.
There’s a lot of value in simply reading team intention. If you have star talent and want to be above .500, you will get pretty close. That’s Chicago.
Patrick Williams has shown more confidence and has sneakily made himself into a viable 3-point threat. Based on preseason play, Coby White looks like something has clicked with his point guard game.
Teams that finished top-10 in defense and have a win total of less than 40 the next season are 10-5 to the over in the past 11 seasons.
The Bulls are unlikely to decide to pull the plug and bail on the season. They are likelier to make a trade that nets them an equal return for Zach Lavine or 75 cents on the dollar (despite DeMar DeRozan being an unrestricted free agent this summer) than pursue a teardown.
The Bulls are 3-0 under Billy Donovan to the over (the closing number last season was in the 30s), and Donovan teams are 5-2 to the over overall. He’s never gone under vs. a win total below 50.
Los Angeles Clippers
Pacific Division Winner +550
Despite knowing better, I love pain and can’t stop betting the Clippers upside. I won’t bet their win total. I won’t bet their title chances. I won’t bet on any awards.
But I will take a +550 on this team in this division.
Before we get to the injury/load management stuff, let’s ask whether they are good enough with Kawhi Leonard and Paul George available to win this bet. With Kawhi Leonard and Paul George on the floor since 2019-20, the Clippers have gone 82-35 for a cool 70.1% win percentage.
Pretty good.
When PG plays, and Leonard sits, they win 55% of their games; when Leonard plays and PG sits, they win 63%.
I understand the Lucy-and-the-football nature of this bet, betting on the Clippers to either be healthy enough or for their star player to be willing to play enough games to get this bet home.
Bear in mind that the league, and more importantly, the NBPA, have made it clear they want to reduce the amount of load management that goes on. It’s a bad look for the league; the players are tired of the criticism based on taking the training staff’s advice, and there’s a new media deal coming up the NBA is trying to negotiate, which directly impacts the players’ wallets.
The Clippers have talked since their exit interviews about taking the regular season more seriously. Ty Lue reportedly had considered leaving his position last year but bought back in after talks with management. Everyone has said the right things. Who knows if they’ll be healthy; if Kawhi Leonard can avoid another knee injury after two surgeries in three seasons.
But at +550, with how good the roster is, I’m willing to bet they can clear a division I think has question marks. The Warriors are older and thinner. The Suns will take time to figure out this almost entirely new roster. The Lakers will be good, but their ceiling doesn’t look impossibly high. The Kings likely regress a bit. That leaves the Clippers in a prime spot to retake the division.
Cleveland Cavaliers
Over 50.5 Wins
It’s another 50-win total that I’m daring to go over despite trends suggesting against it. I have the Cavs projected for around 54 wins this season, giving us 3.5 wins of clearance.
This is basically taking the same roster as last season and adding a small bump for adding Max Strus and Georges Niang as corner shooters. That shooter spot was a major issue for the Cavs in the regular season and playoffs (despite some good numbers for Isaac Okoro overall). They have a little better roster to fit around their two-big makeup.
Donovan Mitchell was underrated last season. He put up 28-4-4 on 48-39-87 splits. He’s capable of a 30-5-5 season easily. For all the talk about breaking up the two-big combination of Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley, that team still combined for a top-3 defense. I don’t expect any slide on that end.
I’m bearish on their playoff chances thanks to J.B. Bickerstaff’s showing in their postseason exit to the Knicks, but this team has been great in the regular season two years in a row.
The risk is that Donovan Mitchell informs them he won’t re-sign, and they work out a trade to the Knicks midseason. But even then, I like the combination of Darius Garland, Mobley, and Allen with whatever they would get in return to finish above 50 wins.
I bet the Cavs to win their division early in the summer, and then the Bucks traded for Damian Lillard. I can’t recommend that bet any longer, but I also don’t believe the bet is dead, given the Bucks’ lack of depth, age, and how strong I think the Cavs are.
Milwaukee Bucks
To Meet Nuggets in the NBA Finals +950
I won’t bet any title bets short in preseason; you can always get them at better or even prices much closer to the start of the playoffs. But I want to get a starter position on this specific combo now. I project the Celtics to have the best record in the league, so they would have homecourt in a potential Eastern Conference Finals matchup vs. the Bucks if things play to chalk.
But I instinctively lean Bucks there. They likely beat the Celtics in 2022 and repeat as champions if Khris Middleton isn’t hurt. Their combination of size and physicality gives the Celtics trouble, and Dame would be the best perimeter player in the series. For Denver, they still have the best starting five in basketball. My concerns about them (above) are focused on the regular season performance, not playoffs. Jokic is the best player in the league, and the Nuggets proved they can win on the road, beating teams in Phoenix, LA, and Miami.
I build title positions as the season progresses, but this is the best Finals matchup to start a portfolio with.
Miami Heat
To Win NBA Title +1300
Three Conference Finals appearances in four years. Two East titles in four seasons. I don’t think this roster is as good as last year. I don’t think it’s wise to count on a run like they had last season, going from the play-in to the Finals. Jimmy Butler is getting older, and their point guard rotation is a disaster.
But they have found a way to compete for the title each season in the Butler era. Their only exit before the conference finals was in 2021, with the short offseason coming off the bubble.
I’m just going to lock this in now so I don’t have to fret about this completely incomprehensible team later.
