Oddsmakers stay firm on Nuggets chances to win after Tuesday’s spring cleaning
Apr 9, 2025, 8:48 AM
The Denver Nuggets shocked the NBA world on Tuesday with the firing of head coach Michael Malone and general manager Calvin Booth with just three games left in the regular season. With the Western Conference stuck in a gridlock before the postseason, and the Nuggets in jeopardy of falling to the Play-In Tournament, the timing of the moves came as a surprise to many.
However, the moves didn’t have much of an impact on Denver’s odds to win in the postseason. At the start of the week, the Nuggets had the second best odds in the Western Conference to make the Play-In, the fourth best odds to both make and win the Western Conference Finals, and the sixth best odds to win a second championship in three years.
While the numbers shifted slightly in the odds, Denver’s positioning among other teams did not. As of Wednesday morning, the team is still the second-highest favorite to make the Play-In (-105), the fourth-highest favorite to win the Western Conference (+1100) and the sixth-highest favorite to win the title (+3,000).
This means that the books don’t think the change will either spark enough change to go on a run in the playoffs or create enough turmoil for Denver to fall further than people had imagined just days ago. David Adelman, who will take over as the interim head coach for Denver for the rest of the season, has been around this team since 2017 as an assistant under Michael Malone.
Adelman has been considered by many as a quality head coaching candidate, and there were talks about him possibly getting poached from the Nuggets after the title run in 2023. However, he stayed in Denver, and now has his chance to show that he can be a quality head coach in this league. The books don’t think that the change in leadership should impact much, so should Nuggets fans think the same? Vegas is rich for a reason!
On the individual front, while the MVP race is essentially over (there aren’t any odds for that race anymore), Nikola Jokic has the fourth-best odds to win the Western Conference Finals MVP award (+1,200) and the seventh-best odds to win the NBA Finals MVP award (+3,100). If Jokic manages to win one of those awards with how the back half of this season has gone, it might spark some uncomfortable conversations about where he sits all time.
The first game of the post-Malone era in Denver is Wednesday night when the team takes on the Kings in Sacramento on national television.
