If you’re a basketball fan, this will surely be one of your favourite times of the year, as the NBA season gets underway on Tuesday night.
It should be an exciting season, with a handful of teams with genuine chances of becoming the 2026-7 NBA champions after the New York Knicks' success last time out. Keep reading for insight into the main contenders, the major off-season trades and the best betting tip for the season.
NBA Season Is a Big Deal
Basketball is one of the most important and popular sports across the planet, not just from a sporting perspective but also a betting one. It’s one of the sports that sees the most action - from US-based bookies to Asian and European ones as well.
If basketball is one of the big sports, then the NBA is king among leagues around the world, as the undisputed pinnacle of the game; the league all fans want to watch and all the world’s best players want to play in.
Unfortunately for European-based fans, most of the matches take place late at night or in the early hours of the morning due to the time difference with the United States, so only the most die-hard fans tend to stay up for it, though checking those overnight scores first thing in the morning is a must for NBA lovers the world over.
On the plus side, some European bookies offer live streaming of selected games with HD pictures and live commentary, which is free to view as long as you have a funded account, meaning that if you do want to stay up and watch it, you can stream games without having to resort to expensive TV sports channel subscriptions.
Best Bet: Philadelphia 76ers to Win the Eastern Conference
The Philadelphia 76ers have the firepower to win the Eastern Conference thanks to a blockbuster off-season that, as explained below, brought in Jaylen Brown and LeBron James.
Brown adds elite scoring and two-way ability, while James brings championship experience, playmaking and leadership that you’d expect from one of the greatest players in history.
They join former MVP Joel Embiid and All-NBA guard Tyrese Maxey, giving Philadelphia multiple scoring threats and options in crucial moments. Rookie VJ Edgecombe also offers athleticism and defensive potential. If James and Brown settle quickly, they’ll be the team to beat in the Eastern Conference, though the impressive Boston Celtics should push them all the way.
Other Favourites
Three of the four teams that made the Conference Finals last year are the betting favourites to go all the way.
Oklahoma City Thunder narrowly lost 4-3 to the San Antonio Spurs at the last-four stage last season, but the bookies see them as the team to beat this time around, with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander once again leading an excellent roster; they’re the 3.4 favourites.
They’re also 2.38 to win the Eastern Conference, which is precisely what they did last year thanks to 64 regular season wins.
Next in the betting are last year’s beaten finalists, San Antonio, who have their own superstar in Victor Wembanyama and will look back on last year’s 4-1 defeat in the NBA Finals as a huge missed opportunity, as they went into it as favourites. They’re 3.75 to be the NBA champions for 2026-7 and just a little bit bigger than Oklahoma at 2.6 to win the Western Conference.
You would have thought that the defending champions, the New York Knicks, would be a shorter price than 9.5 to do it all over again, but apparently not.
Though Jalen Brunson remains at the heart of everything good they do and Karl Anthony Towns can be deadly from outside the paint, the loss of the multi-dimensional Mitchell Robinson to the Boston Celtics may leave them a bit short, especially in terms of his defensive contributions, while the feeling among many experts is that they can be overly reliant on Brunson and that any sort of long-term injury to him could seriously dampen their chances.
The fourth team to have made those Conference Finals were Cleveland, but they’re down as eight-favourites at 23.0, with the likes of the Philadelphia 76ers (10.0), the Boston Celtics (14.0) and the Minnesota Timberwolves (21.0) all shorter than them
Plenty of Outright markets
If you like playing the Outright market, or futures as they’re called on the other side of the pond, now is the time to do so.
All the major bookies will have dozens of different outright markets on offer before the action gets underway, including: the winner of the different Conferences, whether named teams will reach a certain number of regular season wins, Rookie of the Year, Coach of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year and Regular Season MVP.
Most of these markets will remain open throughout the season, with odds updated after each round of matches.
The Biggest Moves of the Off-Season
He may be 41 now, but few players can match what LeBron James has achieved in his career. And he’s not hanging up his trainers anytime soon, having left the LA Lakers as a free agent to sign for the Philadelphia 76ers, who are starting to look like a potentially championship-winning side, even more so after also signing Jaylen Brown from the Celtics in a separate deal.
In a complicated trade involving other players also being traded and three future first-round draft selections for the Milwaukee Bucks, Giannis Antetokounmpo was traded by the Bucks to the Miami Heat alongside Bobby Portis, with no fewer than four players going the other way, so we’ll have to wait and see who ended up getting the better of that deal.
Elsewhere, Kawhi Leonard returned to the Toronto Raptors in another somewhat complex deal that involved Leonard’s former team, the LA Clippers, getting Gradey Dick and Brandon Ingram in return, plus future draft picks and pick swaps.
Mouth-Watering Games on the Opening Night
We won’t have to wait long to see LeBron in action for his new team, the 76ers, as they travel to New York to play the defending champions, the Knicks, on Tuesday night, the opening evening of the new season.
The bookies reckon LeBron won’t get off to a winning start, with the Knicks 1.53 and the 76ers 2.5, while the points spread stands at New York -5.5. On the player prop markets, LeBron is also 3.0 to make 10+ assists, while Jalen Brunson is 2.5 to score 30+ points.
A few hours later, it’s the two teams that contested that thrilling 4-3 Western Conference Final playoff last year in action as the Spurs (1.73) play hosts to the Thunder (2.1).
The bookies expect plenty of points contributions from the two teams’ respective stars, with Gilgeous-Alexander just 1.83 to score 30 or more points and Wembanyama 2.63 to do the same.
