NBA Finals Betting – All the Props You Can Stop and Pop

Well, 82 regular season games and three rounds of playoffs later, what are we left with? The best team in the league (record-wise) facing LeBron James in his fifth straight NBA finals appearance. In other words, what everyone and their ballin’ dog said was going to happen as far back as November.

While Golden State vs. Cleveland may have been an easy title matchup to predict for most of the season, the props heading into the decisive series are decidedly less so. With injuries to key players on both sides of the court, it’s really anyone’s guess how the series is going to play out.

Hey! We’re anyone! And we have a guess!

Odds of Winning the 2015 NBA Title:

• Golden State – 4/9
• Cleveland –16/7

Odds of …

• Golden State winning in 4 – 18/1
• Golden State winning in 5 – 21/5
• Golden State winning in 6 – 18/7
• Golden State winning in 7 – 33/7
• Cleveland winning in 4 – 100/1
• Cleveland winning in 5 – 20/1
• Cleveland winning in 6 – 9/1
• Cleveland winning in 7 – 6/1

Odds to win the Bill Russell NBA Finals MVP Award:

• Steph Curry – 2/3
• LeBron James – 2/1
• FIELD – 12/1

Odds of averaging the most PPG in the 2015 NBA Finals:

• Steph Curry – 3/2
• LeBron James – 8/5
• Kyrie Irving – 9/1
• Klay Thompson – 10/1
• FIELD – 40/1

Odds that Mark Jackson emcees the presentation of the Larry O’Brien Trophy to the Golden State Warriors or the Bill Russell NBA Finals MVP Award to Steph Curry: (As awkward as that could be for the former coach, the loss of Stuart Scott leaves the emcee slot open) – 3/1

Odds of Steph Curry finishing with more 30-point games than LeBron James has triple-doubles in the 2015 NBA Finals :

• Steph Curry 30-point games – 2/15
• LeBron James triple-doubles – 8/1

Odds of scorign the first three-pointer in the 2015 NBA Finals:

• Steph Curry – 19/7
• Klay Thompson – 13/4
• Kyrie Irving – 11/2
• LeBron James – 9/1
• FIELD – 3/1

Odds of receiving the first technical foul of the 2015 NBA Finals:

• Draymond Green – 5/2
• Matthew Dellevadova – 5/1
• Steve Kerr – 7/1
• JR Smith – 15/2
• Timofey Mozgov – 10/1
• LeBron James – 23/2
• David Blatt – 16/1
• FIELD – 11/2

Odds of receiving the first technical foul as a result of an altercation with Matthew Dellavedova in the 2015 NBA Finals:

• Draymond Green – 6/5
• Shaun Livingston – 11/2
• Steph Curry – 15/2
• Andre Iguodala – 9/1
• Klay Thompson – 13/1
• Festus Ezeli – 27/2
• Andrew Bogut – 30/1
• Harrison Barnes – 99/1

Odds that a Warriors player receives a Flagrant 2 (and is ejected from a game) from an altercation with Matthew Dellavedova in the 2015 NBA Finals:

• YES – 9/2
• NO – 1/4

Odds on which ABC broadcaster will be the first to address Matthew Dellavedova as a “Dirty Player”:

• Sage Steele – 1/1
• Doug Collins – 4/1
• Jalen Rose – 17/3
• Mike Breen – 10/1
• Jeff Van Gundy – 19/1
• Lisa Salters – 75/1
• Heather Cox – 100/1
• Doris Burke – 125/1

Odds of receiving the first flagrant foul during the 2015 NBA Finals:

• Andrew Bogut – 5/1
• Matthew Dellavedova – 6/1
• Tristan Thompson – 7/1
• Kendrick Perkins – 12/1
• Timofey Mozgov – 12/1
• Draymond Green – 15/1
• Festus Ezeli – 20/1 (You have to play to foul.)

Odds LeBron James will wear a headband at some point during the 2015 NBA Finals:

• Headband – 3/1
• No headband – 4/11

Odds Joey Crawford falls while referreeing the 2015 NBA Finals: (His fall during Game 4 of the Golden State/Houston series wasn’t his first tete-a-tete with terra firma this season. That means he’s fallen twice in roughly 65 games.)

• Fall – 33/1
• No Fall – 1/33

Odds of which player Jalen Rose will say “Keep gettin’ dem checks” to: (Rose, now a TV personality, uses the line on players “whose contracts are outperforming them“.)

• David Lee – 1/1 (Who’s the highest paid player on Golden State? Yup, D-Lee at $15M. He’s averaging 8.4 MPG in the playoffs.)
• Brendan Haywood – 3/1 (Haywood, who has played just two minutes in the playoffs, is due for a raise from $2M this season to $10M next season. But, in reality, he’s not going to get it.)
• Andre Iguodala – 8/1 (Iguodala is still a serviceable player, but he’s also making $12M, which is more than Curry.)
• Mike Miller – 12/1
• Shawn Marion – 12/1
• Kendrick Perkins – 20/1 (While unquestionably underperforming, none of the latter three are earning over $2.7M this year.)

Odds of which celebrity fan attends the most 2015 NBA Finals games:

• Usher – 3/2
• Drake – 3/2
• Jessica Alba – 7/2

Odds of which player is first to bring a child to a post-game press conference during the 2015 NBA Finals:
(Curry did it recently; but that makes it all the more likely it’ll be someone else next. No one seems to be making a habit of it yet. LeBron, meanwhile, brought his kids on court for the post-game celebration after vanquishing the Hawks. We could see them at a presser in the near future.)

• LeBron James – 6/1
• Steph Curry – 18/1
• FIELD – 1/9

Odds of which player appears in more commercials during Game 1 of the 2015 NBA Finals:

• Steph Curry (Under Armour, All-State, Degree, Unilever, Express) – 3/1
• LeBron James (Kia, Nike, Coke/Sprite, Beats, McDonalds) – 1/3 (James still has more endorsements and they’re with the more commercial-crazy companies.)

Odds on which of the following deep bench players will score the most points in 2015 NBA Finals: (Chalk-up the necessity of this prop to all the injuries.)

• Mike Miller – 3/1
• Kendrick Perkins – 7/2
• Shawn Marion – 4/1
• Joe Harris – 8/1
• James McAdoo – 9/1
• Justin Holiday – 10/1
• Brandon Rush – 10/1
• Brendan Haywood – 25/1

(Photo credit: Keith Allison from Baltimore, USA (LeBron James) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Photo has been cropped.)