The Lakers currently being favored to win the 2023 NBA championship because of the hubbub surrounding Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.
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The Los Angeles Lakers were out of the Kyrie Irving sweepstakes mere 48 hours ago. The Nets point guard opted into his $36 million player option and while this never meant he didn’t want out, it was low-key understood that him and Kevin Durant were going to run it back in Brooklyn for a 4th year.
However, KD would drop the bombshells of all bombshells by requesting a trade out of Brooklyn yesterday. This eventually divulged into Adrian Wojnarowski reporting that Kyrie too was looking to move on from his time as a Net.
Amidst the bevy of reports that have come out on both of these two superstars, two of them stand out from the Lakers’ perspective:
- Kyrie Irving has been angling towards a trade to the Los Angeles Lakers quite aggressively and,
- Both KD and Kyrie want to play together but just not in Brooklyn.
Lakers fans being Lakers fans, they immediately went on to believe that they are getting both Kevin and Kyrie.
Lakers odds of winning the 2023 NBA championship are way up.
With all the noise surrounding Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, the Los Angeles Lakers took a massive jump in their odds to win a championship in 2023. They were at +2400 and are currently at +800, even higher than the +1000 they were a couple hours back.
+2200 ➡️ +1000
In the last 24 hours, the Lakers title odds have changed drastically @CaesarsSports 👀
Full NBA title odds: https://t.co/JsTIrQdRhN pic.twitter.com/oh1a2TY3AS
— Action Network (@ActionNetworkHQ) July 1, 2022
In short being ‘+1000’ means betting $100 on that team to win the title would rake in a $1000. So, the lower that number is, the likelier it is that that team achieves the goal the bet is placed on.
Now, the Lakers having both Kyrie and KD on their roster is impossible as they are at a $-51 million in salary cap space due to them having over $20 million in cap holds. Also, the fact that LeBron James, Russell Westbrook, and Anthony Davis eat up nearly the entirety of the cap seems to be quite the problem.
