{"id":249709,"date":"2026-05-31T16:28:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T16:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/249709\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T16:28:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T16:28:07","slug":"bettors-heavily-invested-in-knicks-to-win-nba-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/249709\/","title":{"rendered":"Bettors heavily invested in Knicks to win NBA Finals"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York has a lot riding on the underdog Knicks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At DraftKings Sportsbook in New York, the Knicks have attracted nearly half of all money wagered on the NBA Finals winner this season — almost as much as every other team combined.<\/p>\n

Now, Victor Wembanyama<\/a> and the favored San Antonio Spurs<\/a> are all that stand in the way. On Saturday night, the Spurs opened as high as -220 favorites to win the Finals, with the Knicks installed as approximately +180 underdogs. The price quickly gravitated toward the rested Knicks, and as of Sunday morning, the Spurs were down to -200 favorites.<\/p>\n

New York swept its two previous series in the Eastern Conference playoffs and has won 11 straight games. The Knicks haven’t played since Monday and will have had eight days off when they tip off against the Spurs on Wednesday in Game 1 of the Finals in San Antonio.<\/p>\n

The Spurs, who survived an intense seven-game series against the Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a> to reach the Finals, are 4.5-point favorites in Game 1.<\/p>\n

This is the ninth Finals matchup between a team that swept its previous series and an opponent that was forced to go seven games. The team coming off the sweep went 5-3 in the previous Finals matchups, according to ESPN Research.<\/p>\n

Both teams were supported heavily at sportsbooks this season. The Spurs entered the season at 65-1 to win the title at DraftKings Sportsbook and would become the biggest preseason underdogs to win the title in at least 40 seasons, according to archive SportsOddsHistory.com.<\/p>\n

The Knicks began the season at 10-1 and saw their championship odds drift to as long as 19-1 during an up-and-down regular season. They reached 35-1 briefly in the postseason, as they struggled with the Atlanta Hawks<\/a> in their first-round playoff series.<\/p>\n

“Knicks are unsurprisingly very heavily bet on in New York, more so than any other state, both per game and in the futures.” Caesars Sportsbook lead NBA trader David Lieberman told ESPN, adding that both the Knicks and Spurs are liabilities for the house in the book’s futures market.<\/p>\n

Wembanyama, who last month was named NBA Defensive Player of the Year, is a -185 favorite to be named Finals MVP at DraftKings Sportsbooks. Since the DPOY was first awarded in 1983, the only player to win that award and Finals MVP in the same season was Hakeem Olajuwon in 1994, according to ESPN Research.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 ESPN Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York has a lot riding on the underdog Knicks. At DraftKings Sportsbook in New York, the Knicks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[97493,3080,21,9,11,1104,10,12,82709,9138],"class_list":["post-249709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-97493","tag-espn","tag-nba","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-new-york-news","tag-news","tag-news-sports-betting","tag-san-antonio-spurs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}