NBA Defensive Player of the Year odds: Which non-Victor Wembanyama bets are worth a shot?

The Defensive Player of the Year conversation starts and probably ends with Victor Wembanyama. Let’s get the obvious out of the way quickly. Ask 100 NBA observers to name the league’s best defender and 90 of them probably start with San Antonio’s enormous Frenchman. There is a world in which he wins this award and another seven or eight more in the years that follow.

But we’re here to talk about these awards from a gambling perspective. Right now, the shortest odds you can find on Wembanyama are -175 on DraftKings. That line implies that Vegas believes Wembanyama has more than a 63.6% chance at winning the award. And frankly, the math there just doesn’t add up.

Forget about whether or not Wembanyama is the best defender in the NBA for a moment. He has to play 65 games to qualify for the award. Last season, of the 569 players that appeared in an NBA game, only 169 appeared in 65 games, less than 30%. Now, it wouldn’t be fair to compare Wembanyama to, say, players on 10-day contracts, so why don’t we amend those numbers slightly. A total of 271 players started at least 10 games last season. Those are players we can categorize as firm, NBA-caliber players. Even among that group, only slightly more than half, 140, appeared in 65 games. And obviously, most of those players are not recovering from a blood clot.

The message here is that reaching 65 games isn’t a given for even a standard NBA player, let alone one with the risk factors Wembanyama has. We normally wouldn’t fixate on that from an awards odds perspective, but Wembanyama’s line is literally minus money. For Wembanyama to have a 63.6% chance at winning this trophy, he has to, by definition, have a better than 63.6% chance of appearing in 65 games for the bet to make sense. And it’s not clear that that is the case before we even factor in the possibility that Wembanyama does indeed play 65 games, but is beaten out for the award by another player.

There is a reasonable chance that’s how this plays out, as hard as that might be to believe right now. Last year, Evan Mobley won playing for the No. 8 defense in the NBA. Even that was unusual, as every winner since 2008 prior to Mobley had played for a top-five defense. Before Wembanyama’s injury last season, the Spurs ranked 19th. Yes, they played at a top-five level when he was on the floor, but that’s true of most candidates. Voters tend to consider the whole.

When we publish our annual awards predictions, Wembanyama will be my pick for Defensive Player of the Year. It would frankly be irresponsible to pick anyone else. He is likelier than any single player to win the award. You could even argue that he should be picked over the field, though I wouldn’t go quite that far. I just can’t remotely get to a 63.6% chance of him winning before the season has even begun. Too many things can go wrong across a six-month season to make such an assumption. The value isn’t there.

So where is the value? That’s what we’re going to try to find out. As Wembanyama is alone as the favorite for this award, we’ll split into only two categories: a non-Wembanyama favorites section that includes candidates at +2500 or shorter, and a long shots section that covers everyone else. These are the best value picks for Defensive Player of the Year.

The (non-Wembanyama) favorites

Here’s how much Wembanyama’s presence has shifted the odds: we have an obvious second-place candidate in Chet Holmgren, but literally everyone else in the NBA is available at odds of 25-to-1 or longer. Essentially, every candidate besides Wembanyama is a long shot.

And for that reason, I struggle to see the value in a Holmgren bet at +700, at least early on. If you do want to bet Holmgren, I’d suggest waiting a month or two and seeing if the odds more drastically swing toward Wembanyama. He’s a 65-game risk as well, and even if he weren’t, it’s just so hard to assign value to any single Thunder defender that picking a winner out of Oklahoma City seems impossible. The Thunder posted nearly identical defensive ratings with Holmgren on the floor (105.6) and off of it (105.9) last season. Even if he is the second-best defender in basketball (and I’m not convinced that’s the case), it’s just going to be too easy to poke holes in his candidacy to justify the massive difference in odds between him and the field.

That leaves three players currently available at +2500. I’m frankly not crazy about any of them, but I’ll go in order of how likely I think each is as a winner:

• Dyson Daniels likely missed his chance last season. His gaudy steal and deflection numbers will seem a bit more normal this season, and Trae Young has never played on a defense that has ranked higher than 18th in the NBA. In general, I steer clear of perimeter players who aren’t long shots. Daniels is a stayaway.
• I’m open to the idea of Amen Thompson. He was my pick to win the award last season. He’s good enough to win Defensive Player of the Year, and I might have endorsed the pick a few weeks ago. However, with Fred VanVleet injured, I expect his offensive workload to increase pretty meaningfully, and for the Rockets to compensate by finding ways to limit Thompson’s defensive workload. They have more than enough big wings to cover for him for short stretches. He’ll still be a great defender. He just has more on his plate now.
• Evan Mobley literally just won this award and is available at 25-to-1. How often does that happen with any award? He’s been held below 65 games only once, he’s in an extremely weak Eastern Conference that Cleveland could run away with, and Defensive Player of the Year is a dynasty award. In the past 30 years, we’ve had four separate players (Dikembe Mutombo, Ben Wallace, Dwight Howard and Rudy Gobert) win the award at least three times. Reputation matters when it comes to Defensive Player of the Year voting, so if you want to bet against Wembanyama playing 65 games, it’s not hard to envision a world in which no one else stands out and the voters default to their previous pick.

So of those three, Mobley is the best value. Truthfully, though, if you’re not just going to take Wembanyama, this is a year to take some bigger swings. There are plenty of long shots with very enticing value.

The long shots

Work backward here. Don’t worry about the minute differences in defensive talent. This is an award that’s very often constructed on year-to-year stat fluctuations and narratives. Focus on team performance. Ask yourself which defenses you could plausibly see landing in the top five at the end of the season, because those are the teams that are going to produce candidates. So we’re just going to go candidate-by-candidate and ask that, specific question.

• Could Miami have a top-five defense? Yes. They ranked ninth after the All-Star break last season, will have Davion Mitchell for the full season, and perhaps more importantly, Tyler Herro will miss the beginning of the season, depriving Miami of its weak link defensively. That will give Bam Adebayo an early chance to gain narrative steam, especially since there’s a perception (that he he has perpetuated) that he’s been snubbed by himself. His +10000 line on FanDuel is an easy long-shot swing.
• Could Golden State have a top-five defense? Again, absolutely, yes. The Warriors had the best defense in the NBA after the All-Star Break and they just added Al Horford. That not only helps their defense, but his shooting gives them a bit more leeway to play defensive-minded guards like Gary Payton II and De’Anthony Melton extra minutes. Draymond Green nearly campaigned his way to last year’s award. He’s another obvious long shot at +5000.
• Could Orlando have a top-five defense? There’s no “could” about it. They’ve been top-three in back-to-back seasons, and with Desmond Bane now in place offensively, Jalen Suggs has even less playmaking responsibility. That frees him up to torture opposing stars even more. He’s one of two perimeter players I really like at +5000.
• Could Detroit have a top-five defense? Yes. They ranked No. 5 from Jan. 1 on. Ausar Thompson won’t have nearly the same offensive workload that his brother will have in Houston. Amen is the more skilled offensive twin, but they obviously have identical physical traits, and Ausar has utilized them just as well defensively. At +6000, he’s the last very attractive long shot.

In the end, only one or two of these candidates will wind up seriously in the mix, but at those prices, you can afford to grab all four and let it shake out organically. Now, there are other big names in this range, so I’ll go through each of them to explain why I’m less enthused about their candidacies.

• Even if I could ignore the training camp pictures from Dallas, Anthony Davis (+3500) seems pretty overpriced with the fifth-shortest odds. The idea that he’s a substantially better defender at power forward than center isn’t really supported by the evidence, and Dallas is quietly pretty undermanned when it comes to point of attack defense unless you believe Cooper Flagg is going to be able to defend star guards as a rookie. Throw in the annual health concerns, and Davis is a no from me.
• Minnesota could certainly have a top-five defense given their performance over the last few years, but I’m still not crazy about Rudy Gobert (+5000). His defensive metrics declined across the board last season, and to be frank, you don’t hand out five-year, $125 million contracts to players you expect to keep on the bench, so I’m anticipating an even bigger Naz Reid role this year, which will cut into Gobert’s duties. Jaden McDaniels is just a tier below the perimeter players who could plausibly win the award.
• Jaren Jackson has too many red flags. He’s too consistently an injury risk. The Memphis front court is already decimated by injuries, which is going to impact their team performance. Ja Morant is a target defensively that Jackson has to cover up for. We don’t know enough about what sort of schematic changes Tuomas Iisalo will make. I’d recommend keeping an eye on Memphis in the preseason and early in the season. Maybe Cedric Coward pops as a rookie, Jaylen Wells thrives in his move from small forward to shooting guard and the center injuries aren’t a big deal. I’m just not ready to commit to suggesting him quite yet.
• The Clippers are too old. Ivica Zubac (+6000) mounted a quiet, nerd-friendly campaign down the stretch last season, but too many things went right last season that may go wrong this season. Besides, they’re devoting more minutes this year to offense-centric players like Bradley Beal and John Collins.
• The Bucks have no point of attack defenders. Even if Giannis Antetokounmpo (+10000) and Myles Turner (+15000) hadn’t experienced meaningful decline over the past few years, that would be too much for them to overcome.
• I’m frankly too nervous about the lineup decisions Portland will make to feel good about Toumani Camara (+9000). They should absolutely start Scoot Henderson, Shaedon Sharpe, Deni Avdija and Camara. Those four players are their future. But I don’t know if they will feel an obligation to start Jrue Holiday given his stature within the league, and Jerami Grant seems to believe he’s starting as well, which makes no sense. Donovan Clingan (+10000) is the more interesting Blazers candidate, but I don’t expect him to play enough minutes either, not through lineup shenanigans, but because there are other centers on the roster who will play.
• I will take any opportunity to sing the praises of Herb Jones (+20000), but it’s not happening on the Pelicans. Come on. Good things don’t happen to the Pelicans. They don’t have remotely enough elsewhere to sniff a top-five defense or overcome whatever Voodoo curse they’ve been afflicted with for the past 20 years.

At the very least, if you’re going to take the plunge and plunk down the Wembanyama money, toss in a few of the hedges we covered. The last thing you want is to make a big minus-money bet that’s wiped off the board in November because of a sprained ankle. Give yourself a bit of coverage. There are plenty of desirable long shots here.