The advantage of betting on awards is that they are comparatively predictable. No, I cannot tell you with perfect accuracy who the 2027 NBA MVP will be... but I can tell you how the prior winners have been selected. Awards voters are humans. Humans are predictable, even if performance is not. While there will be injuries and unexpected candidates and circumstantial changes we can't yet foresee, we can at least use the history of these awards to land on the type of players who tend to win them, and then work backward from there.

So we're going to reverse engineer some best bets for NBA awards season now that opening night is nearly upon us. These are not, strictly, NBA awards picks. If you could pick one player to win Defensive Player of the Year, for example, you should pick Victor Wembanyama. But if you're trying to find the best return on investment in that category, paying minus money on the hope that Wembanyama plays 65 games seems like a high-risk, low-reward proposition. 

The goal here is to find the players that best fit the prior history of these awards in a way that maximizes profit. With all of that in mind, let's begin.

MVP: Luka Dončić, Lakers (+600)

The MVP formula points very clearly toward a single candidate this year. Every MVP since LeBron James in 2012 has checked two boxes: they have been between the ages of 24 and 28, and they were either a First- or Second-Team All-NBA selection in the prior season. That's essentially the criteria: a top-10 player in the previous season peaks at some point in his prime and gets a trophy. Victor Wembanyama is too young (and has the shortest odds... and carries 65-game concerns). Nikola Jokić is too old. 

Only three players check both boxes. The first is two-time defending champion Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who's facing the notable challenge of seeking his third consecutive trophy. Nobody has won three straight MVPs since Larry Bird, and that became a major topic when Jokić tried and failed to three-peat in 2023. It's not fair, but Gilgeous-Alexander is going to get held to a ridiculous standard. Michael Jordan and LeBron James couldn't go three-for-three, and there will be voters who hold that against Gilgeous-Alexander.

The second is Cade Cunningham. He has by far the longest odds of the three, but he has the most working against him as well. It's very hard to repeat as a 60-game winner. The Thunder and Celtics are the only teams to do it this century, and in addition to having superior rosters, they didn't have to deal with a tanking-free NBA. The Pistons, thanks to lottery reform, will. Win totals are going to be deflated, especially in a loaded Eastern Conference. It wouldn't take much actual decline for the Pistons to fall from 60 to 50 wins, and there's room for notable decline here. Will Jalen Duren repeat last year's performance after an offseason-long contract standoff? Can they sustain the losses of key role players like Tobias Harris and Isaiah Stewart? And of course, Cunningham isn't in the sort of offense-first environment that tends to lead to MVP stats. This is a defensive-minded team that starts two non-shooters.

That leaves us with Dončić, the seemingly perpetual offseason favorite. The Lakers have finally built him the sort of team he wants: an imposing rim protector at center (Walker Kessler), a second, star-level creator (Austin Reaves) and plenty of shooting everywhere else. The Lakers have plenty of ball-handling redundancy to keep the offense afloat when he rests. Dončić averaged nearly 34 points, eight rebounds and eight assists after Jan. 1, so the numbers should be MVP-level. LeBron is gone. The team is finally his.

We all know the Wembanyama era is coming. If it's at all close, there will be voter sympathy behind the idea of sneaking one last winner in before we assume the trophy gets its next dynastic winner. There are real 65-game fears (he needed an appeal to sneak past that threshold last season), and backup center is a concern here that could cost the Lakers games in the standings. But Dončić checks the historical boxes, will likely have the biggest raw numbers, plays for a glamour franchise and is about as due for an MVP award as any player has ever been. He might be the best player who's never won one. Now is his best chance.

Defensive Player of the Year: Bam Adebayo, Heat (+4000)

Alright, let's have the Wembanyama conversation. If he plays 65 games, he wins. Any objections? No? Cool. You're paying -330 odds for the privilege of hoping he stays healthy, which implies odds of just under 77% that he wins. So what we're really asking here is if there's a 77% chance that Victor Wembanyama plays 65 games. I would lean no for a few reasons:

• A total of 166 players participated in 65 or more games last season. A total of 579 players played in at least one game, so a bit more than a quarter of all NBA players played 65 games last season. Now, that's not a fair sample here since it includes two-ways, 10-days and other cup of coffee types rather than real NBA players. Let's reduce our sample. Exactly 209 players started at least 20 games a season ago... and only 120, or 57.4%, reached 65 games. In other words, even for a standard player, the odds of reaching 65 games are probably below 77%.
• From a health standpoint, Wembanyama probably isn't a standard player. He's the tallest player in the league, and historically speaking, players that big tend to be injury-prone. Wembanyama has been more durable than most thus far. That doesn't eliminate the risk entirely.
• Wembanyama's rookie extension includes no Rose Rule bonuses. He has no financial incentive to push to play 65 games for an individual award. If it's close, especially after they lost the Finals a year ago, the Spurs will prioritize health for the postseason.

So if your life depended on it and you just needed to pick someone? Yes. Take Wembanyama. His odds just don't reflect his actual chances.

So, who are we looking for in the "non-Wembanyama" weight class? For starters, the responsible choice is always a center. Every decade, we tend to get one non-rim-protector winner (even if that player wins more than once). It was Gary Payton in the 1990s, Ron Artest in the 2000s, Kawhi Leonard in the 2010s, and Marcus Smart in the 2020s. We've already acknowledged perimeter play this decade, and the Smart award has aged badly enough to scare off some voters. We're also looking for a top-five defense. Every winner since 2008 has played for one except Evan Mobley in 2025... who only won because Wembanyama had a blood clot, and even he was on an anomalous 64-win team.

So who are the rim protectors on likely top-five defenses? I projected the Spurs, Thunder, Pistons, Raptors and Heat as the top-five defenses for this season. We've already covered San Antonio's candidate. Oklahoma City's Chet Holmgren has the next lowest odds at +1200, but he has the disadvantage of playing on a historically loaded defense. Assigning credit to a single Thunder defender feels reductive, and fair or not, playoff performance is absolutely held against players in this race. It's not a coincidence that Rudy Gobert lost this award in 2022, right after he was unfairly blamed for the hottest shooting night of Terance Mann's life. Holmgren is still washing the stink of the Western Conference Finals off of himself.

Detroit's candidate is a non-center, Ausar Thompson. In truth, I'd call him the NBA's second-best defender. That doesn't mean voting will reflect that, especially since the absence of Isaiah Stewart hurts the defense on balance. Besides, Thompson's fouling and offensive vulnerabilities tend to prevent him from playing the sort of minutes someone needs to win this award. Scottie Barnes does play enough minutes, but, in part because of his offensive responsibilities, he isn't quite as impactful defensively as Thompson is. The stars need to align perfectly for a non-center, and they don't in Barnes' case.

That leaves Miami's center, Bam Adebayo, who has spent years complaining about how he doesn't have one of these awards yet. Well, this is his best chance. Miami has one of the best defensive lineups in the NBA. Giannis Antetokounmpo has won this award, but he has declined just enough not to compete with Adebayo for this year's. Davion Mitchell and Andrew Wiggins are legitimate plus starters, and Erik Spoelstra might be the NBA's most creative defensive coach. Adebayo doesn't post gaudy block or steal numbers, and the all-in-ones usually nudge him below the top handful of defensive bigs, but the eye test is obviously favorable and, as with Dončić, there will be a sense that he's due if he comes close. At 40-to-1, this is one of the better value plays on the board.

Rookie of the Year: Caleb Wilson, Bulls (+350)

Rookie of the Year is historically a counting stats award. Playing for a winning team almost never factors in, as the race between Cooper Flagg and Kon Knueppel last year, or Victor Wembanyama vs. Chet Holmgren three seasons ago, demonstrates. In the past two decades, the only Rookie of the Year winners to average fewer than 15 points per game have been Malcolm Brogdon, who only won because Joel Embiid got hurt, and Stephon Castle, who won in a historically weak class. Therefore, we're looking for opportunity first and foremost.

That immediately rules out AJ Dybantsa of the Wizards and Darryn Peterson of the Jazz. The former is on a team with two veteran stars and several younger players still trying to make their mark in the league. The latter plays with another high-usage guard who just signed a long-term extension and two veteran star forwards. They're going to be great, but they're going to have fewer opportunities.

That leaves us three viable candidates. Darius Acuff Jr. has the longest odds outside of the top four, and he's probably going to lead all rookies in shot attempts simply because he plays for the Kings. Of course, that's a bit of a double-edged sword in this respect. He'll likely be the least efficient of the candidates for the same reason, and while that doesn't matter in some races, this one will likely be too competitive for a player to get away with putting up empty numbers.

Cameron Boozer is the most pro-ready rookie in this class. He swept the National Player of the Year awards in college a season ago, and most of the analytical models pegged him as clearly the best prospect in this class. Memphis probably has the most available shots among these teams. The concern here is slight, but statistically notable. The Grizzlies simply don't play their players as many minutes as most other teams do. Tuomas Iisalo believes in limiting players to four- or five-minute bursts. If you ignore the tanking players they used at the end of the year, Jaren Jackson Jr. led the Grizzlies with only 30.7 minutes per game last year. If Boozer plays four or five fewer minutes per night than the other candidates, that could create a counting stats disadvantage.

Caleb Wilson is handling the ball quite a bit in the preseason. The Bulls are seemingly putting him through the suddenly common "what if we point guard-ified our top forward prospect" arc that Flagg endured a year ago and Giannis Antetokounmpo popularized a decade ago. That approach tends to come with growing pains, but as Flagg can attest, it is not disqualifying in the Rookie of the Year race. If anything, the volume is helpful. Wilson likely won't have the ball as much as Flagg did a season ago, but he's on a roster that makes more sense and should be more conducive to his success. You're getting slightly better odds on Wilson than you are on Boozer. It's a justifiable matter of preference between the two. Boozer is the safer pick. Wilson's upside and longer odds push him over the top for me.

Coach of the Year: Joe Mazzulla, Celtics (+2500)

Here's where we start to defy history in one notable way: nobody has ever repeated as Coach of the Year. Not Gregg Popovich. Not Phil Jackson. Not Pat Riley. Not Red Auerbach. That's why Mazzulla's odds are this long, and those odds are why he's such an easy pick. He's the NBA's best regular-season coach. I'm happy to take the 25-to-1 swing on someone this good defying history.

Mazzulla's offense has ranked either No. 1 or No. 2 in all four of his seasons at the helm for the Celtics. He maintained that excellence a season ago largely without his best player, Jayson Tatum, and with half of his 2024 championship rotation gone. His approach produces regular-season wins en masse. The Celtics shoot more 3s than almost everyone. They get more offensive rebounds than almost everyone. They protect the rim better than almost everyone. They never turn the ball over.

The Jaylen Brown trade will be enormously helpful to Mazzulla's case. It is simultaneously the narrative trigger that a coach would need to defy the "nobody has repeated" history and a move made to further mold the team in Mazzulla's image. Paul George fits much more cleanly into the whole "shoot a million 3s and never turn the ball over" scheme than Brown does. Mitchell Robinson only amplifies Boston's success protecting the basket on one end and owning the glass on the other. No roster more cleanly matches its coach's stylistic preferences than this one.

Every Coach of the Year winner since Doc Rivers in 2000 has been a top-four seed. Most of them are top-two seeds, and the formula is quite often "the most surprising of the four best regular-season teams." Well, nobody is going to be surprised when the Spurs and Thunder capture the top two Western Conference seeds. The shock of the Brown trade has worn off. Plenty of people expect the Celtics to have a very successful regular season. But it generated more than enough doubt to vault Mazzulla into a historic repeat if he pulls this off.

Sixth Man of the Year: Daniss Jenkins, Pistons (+5000)

The favorites here are all obvious starting candidates. Payton Pritchard and Dylan Harper might be opening night starters, and even if they're not, they could force the issue relatively early. Ajay Mitchell is an injury away, but the Thunder tend to be cautious when their players get hurt. They rest key players frequently, and it's not hard to imagine a world in which Mitchell starts half of the season purely through filling in for teammates. And as is the case for Holmgren with Defensive Player of the Year, it's hard to assign too much credit to a single Thunder reserve for their bench dominance. Mitchell will score the points, but does that mean he's a better player than Alex Caruso? Jared McCain is a starting-level player. Jaylin Williams might be as well. That's a hard roster to stand out on.

Our last six winners have come from top-three seeds, so we want someone on a winning roster. We also want scoring, as 10 of the 17 winners between 2006 and 2022 were that season's leading bench scorer. We haven't had a season's leading bench scorer win since, but pure point total is always a factor in this race. You win by coming off the bench for a winner and scoring a lot of points.

The last four winners have hovered around the 13-15-point per game mark. Jenkins wasn't there most of last season, but he averaged 19 points per game in relief of the injured Cade Cunningham for a key stretch late last year. He's not going to start often this year, but think about the Pistons roster. He's really the only proven, secondary ball-handler now that Tobias Harris and Caris LeVert are gone. Unless Ebuka Okorie is ready faster than we're anticipating, the sheer volume of dribbling opportunities available to Jenkins this season is going to be absolutely enormous for a bench player. At 50-to-1, that sort of volume on a team this good is too tempting to pass up.

Most Improved Player: Coby White, Hornets (+4500)

Most Improved Player can typically be distilled into "the first-time All-Star" award. The last two winners bucked that trend, as the Hawks won with Dyson Daniels and Nickeil Alexander-Walker. Before that? Our previous five winners were first-time All-Stars. The catch with that definition this season is that none of the obvious first-time All-Star candidates make sense through the award's other typical standards.

Austin Reaves has a great chance at making his first All-Star Team this season. He's already received votes for this award in two separate seasons. You can't be a candidate for this award every year. Cooper Flagg is another consensus pick as a possible first-time All-Star, but he's in his second season. No second-year player has won this award since Monta Ellis in 2007, but Ellis was a second-round pick. Flagg is literally the reigning Rookie of the Year. It's possible and perhaps probable that a player truly does come out of nowhere to make an All-Star Team. That player becomes the favorite. For now, we're working off of opportunity and circumstance.

Coby White has had All-Star-esque stretches. He averaged almost 28 points per game in March 2025, right after the Bulls traded Zach LaVine and handed him and Josh Giddey the keys to the offense. In the tiny, 282-minute sample he played without LaMelo Ball in Charlotte last season, White scored 33.2 points per 75 possessions on 61.3% true shooting. He won't be that good over the full season, but it goes to show that White, when entrusted to run an offense, can post absolutely bonkers numbers. 

He's playing on a team with shooting everywhere. The Hornets have a real chance to break the 3-point attempt record. With Ball gone, creation is at a premium in Charlotte. White is going to be the player responsible for creating most of those 3-point attempts. He'll have a hard time actually making the All-Star team simply because Brandon Miller and Kon Knueppel are ahead of him in the team's overall pecking order and this team isn't going to be good enough for multiple All-Stars, but if the Hornets exceed expectations and White posts huge numbers in the process, a 45-to-1 ticket is going to feel very valuable.