In case you missed it, this is the final month of The Chalkboard. October 31st, the Substack will be closed. For more information, click here!
This is quite possibly the last post on the Substack! It’s been a fun (almost) year. And thank you again.
The NBA season starts tomorrow, and I just wanted to give a few thoughts on the various NBA awards, since I have an obsession with award markets. I just think they’re really fun, and really interesting.
The most important lesson won’t be any bets (although I did bet a couple things). Actually, the lesson is, it’s totally OK to wait to bet NBA awards, and you probably will miss almost nothing. I shall explain.
Joel Embiid won MVP last year. One month into the season (ish), he was about 20/1 - 25/1. Then he rattled off some huge games and got back among the contenders, but was never the clear favorite until very late in the process. You probably don’t have to bet MVP right now, although you can.
Jaren Jackson Jr. won Defensive Player of the Year. He didn’t play to start the season because he was hurt, so his price drifted to about 40/1 or better, then when he came back his price quickly plummeted and he was among the favorites the rest of the season. You probably don’t have to bet DPOY right now, although you can.
Malcolm Brogdon won Sixth Man of the Year, but he was almost never the preferred player by the market the entire season. Jordan Poole was the preseason favorite, Russell Westbrook then became the favorite for about 3 months (he was never going to win because the Lakers weren’t good enough) and then Immanuel Quickley took over from Brogdon late in the year with a good run of form. There were 100 opportunities to bet Brogdon during the year. You probably don’t have to bet Sixth Man right now, although you can.
Lauri Markkanen won Most Improved Player, and almost no one saw that coming beforehand. I bet 25/1, 20/1, and 15/1 about two weeks into the season, then when SGA really got it going, the Markkanen prices went back up to those levels for another couple weeks. You probably don’t have to bet Most Improved right now, although you can (and I did).
Mike Brown won Coach of the Year. He was still 80/1 six weeks into the season. No one thought the Kings would sustain their play. They did. You probably don’t have to bet Coach of the Year right now, although you can.
And then also not included here is that Paolo Banchero was the favorite for Rookie of the Year, went to -800 in like two games and it was a dead market the whole year. Even if you bet him before the year you didn’t make very much because he was basically always a low-priced favorite and that was confirmed in his first game.
My point is, look what prices you could have gotten all season, and you didn’t have to jam in a bunch of bets October 23rd to do it. A lot of the best prices were available WAY later on, when you could actually get a feel for how stuff looked. You could see teams play even a handful of times (which is insanely valuable for awards). You really just want to act faster than the market on finding the attractive options. Sometimes the market adjusts in one game, sometimes it’s all over the place, sometimes a player or coach that’s very likely to win just won’t move down quickly, for a variety of reasons. Russell Westbrook was the favorite for Sixth Man for basically the entire autumn season because so many people bet him when he went to the bench. I’ll just keep saying that because it doesn’t get any less crazy as time goes by.
Still, what fun is it to just say “let’s wait and see!” so here are a few things I’m at least thinking about with every market.
Yes, the thoughts are for paying subscribers, as one last thank you for sticking it out to the end. If you are a free sub, I love you, and you can listen to the podcast/radio show where I’ll do a bunch of this in the next couple days.