2025 NBA Championship Odds: Celtics Open As Heavy Favorites To Repeat Ahead Of Nuggets, Wolves, Thunder

The Boston Celtics are your 2024 NBA champions, but now, the far more daunting task of defending that title has officially begun. No team has repeated as NBA champions since the Golden State Warriors did so in 2018. In fact, the last six seasons have featured six separate champions.

Still, Vegas remains bullish as ever on the Celtics. Caesars Sportsbook has already opened betting for the 2025 title, and the favorite, unsurprisingly, are the current champions. Here is where all 30 teams stand as of now.

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At +300, the Celtics have opened as the strongest championship favorites since the 2021-22 Brooklyn Nets settled at +240. The Celtics were opening night title favorites in both the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons, but at longer odds. Now that the Celtics are officially the champions, their odds of repeating at the sportsbooks have only grown shorter. 

Still, that doesn't mean the odds are necessarily in their favor. Aside from the Celtics this season, who were technically co-favorites with the Nuggets, no opening night favorite has won it all since the 2018 Golden State Warriors. A +300 line implies 25% odds, which means that Vegas still thinks there's a 75% chance that the Celtics do not win it all in 2025.

The 2023 champion Nuggets sit alone at No. 2 at +750, but notably, the next batch of teams are all clustered very closely together. Notably, the reigning Western Conference champion Dallas Mavericks sit below the Nuggets and Timberwolves (+900) in their own conference. They are tied with the Oklahoma City Thunder at +950 despite defeating both Oklahoma City and Minnesota in the 2024 postseason.

Bringing up the rear are five teams currently sitting at 500-to-1. The Utah Jazz, Detroit Pistons, Brooklyn Nets, Washington Wizards and Portland Trail Blazers all share bottom slot. While none are especially likely to win it all, those odds on Brooklyn and Utah, given their wealth of tradable draft picks and reported desire to go star-hunting, seem relatively low.

These odds are going to change quite a bit in the coming weeks and months. The NBA's offseason is notorious among professional sports for generating chaos. Players will change teams. Unexpected obstacles will arise. Take these odds if anything seems especially egregious, but understand you're betting with less information than you will ever have in the 2025 championship market.