2024 NBA Finals exact outcome odds: Best bets on which teams will play for

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It’s time to cut to the chase on those NBA Finals futures bets as we prepare to enter the final quarter of the regular season.

And we can narrow the focus on those futures wagers even further by predicting the exact matchup and outcome for June’s championship series. As of midweek, those odds could be found at two of the leading online sportsbooks, BetMGM and FanDuel.

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Boston entered the week with the league’s best record — 7.5 games ahead of its closest pursuer in the Eastern Conference and five games clear of anyone in the West.

Powered by the elite duo of All-Stars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, the Celtics also owned the league’s best offensive and net ratings while ranking third in defensive rating.

The likelihood of a No. 1 seed portends big things for Boston this postseason.

In the 77-year history of the NBA Finals, a 1-seed has played for the championship 62 times and has won the title 51 times. In the last 25 seasons, 16 NBA Finals have featured a No. 1 seed with 13 top-seeded champs.

As for the Nuggets, they came out of the All-Star break sitting fourth in the Western Conference.

But Denver is, of course, the defending league champion led by the current odds-on front-runner (center Nikola Jokic) to win his third NBA MVP award in the last four seasons.

Given that playoff experience edge over the West’s other top teams — the youthful Minnesota Timberwolves and Oklahoma City Thunder and the perennially underwhelming Los Angeles Clippers — it’s easy to see why the Nuggets are currently favored to win the West.

And if Jokic and Co. do nab the conference’s No. 1 seed down the stretch, it will be tough for the other West contenders as the Nuggets own a league-best home winning percentage of .738 since 2021.

We’ll just flip the result from above and go with the Nuggets to beat the Celtics and notch the NBA’s first back-to-back championships since the 2017-18 Golden State Warriors.

Denver did hand Boston its first home loss of the season, winning 102-100 on Jan. 19. The return match is set for March 7 in the Mile High City.

And even if the Celtics do wind up with the league’s best record in 2023-24, it’s been anything but a guarantee of Finals success of late as each of the last six — and seven of the last eight — NBA regular-season top finishers failed to follow up with a postseason championship.

Yeah, we’re going all in on the Celtics here.

But there’s no denying that they’ve been the clear class of the Eastern Conference with Philadelphia 76ers center/reigning MVP Joel Embiid battling a knee injury and the underperforming Milwaukee Bucks changing coaches at midseason.

But for our third NBA Finals exact outcome best bet, let’s go with the surprising Thunder to win the West.

Led by MVP-contender Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the league’s second-leading scorer and steals leader, OKC was tied with the Timberwolves for the conference lead.

But unlike Minnesota which only ranks 17th in offensive rating, the Thunder own top-four offensive and defensive rankings and the league’s second-best net rating behind Boston.

It’s the regular season of course, but SGA and Co. also have shown they can beat the defending champs, taking three of four from the Nuggets to win the season series.

And, finally, wagering on this exact finals outcome demonstrates the value of odds shopping as Celtics over Thunder was listed as only +2200 at FanDuel.