When we covered Defensive Player of the Year odds, we dived into why making a minus-money bet before the season even begins is unwise. Yes, Victor Wembanyama is probably going to win the award, but the value there just isn’t worthwhile. There’s far more risk than reward at a minus-money price.
Well, here we have yet another award with a minus-money favorite. The longest odds you can find on Cooper Flagg right now to win 2025-26 NBA Rookie of the Year are -175 at DraftKings. Yet there are three critical differences between Rookie of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year that actually make Flagg a reasonable bet:
- There is no 65-game minimum for eligibility. Sure, if Flagg misses half of the season, he probably won’t win. But you won’t have to worry about counting absences. You can win this award playing 50 games. Patrick Ewing did so. Brandon Roy played 57 in 2007. You just get far more flexibility when it comes to injuries on this award than you do the others.
- Team performance doesn’t matter. Yes, Flagg is going to be on a team that aims to be competitive, but in Wembanyama’s case, he is relying on the Spurs to be a reasonably successful team defense in order to win Defensive Player of the Year. That won’t be the case for Flagg. As the best rookies are generally high draft picks and high draft picks generally belong to bad teams, voters are far more understanding if a great prospect lands on a losing team. Most winners miss the playoffs.
- The fact that team performance doesn’t matter means that statistics tend to play an outsize role in picking winners here. Defense can be somewhat opaque. How do you measure a shot-blocker’s value against a point-of-attack guard’s? We don’t have great defensive metrics. It’s far simpler where rookies are concerned. The winner is usually the player who accumulates the most points, rebounds and assists. We’ve never had a Rookie of the Year winner average single digits in points, for instance, and in the past two decades, only Stephon Castle (in a historically weak class) and Malcolm Brogdon (who won only because Joel Embiid got hurt) were below 15. This is relevant because very few rookies even receive enough of an opportunity to score that much. Generally speaking, you’ll know who most of the candidates are going into a given season. Brogdon was the last winner picked outside of the lottery, and again, he won because Embiid didn’t. So trimming the field here is easy. That isn’t the case for Defensive Player of the Year, which encompasses the entire league.
So while I could not endorse a Wembanyama Defensive Player of the Year bet, I think Flagg is at least a reasonable choice. He will be practically everyone’s pick, including mine, so if you’re going to bet on this award, you’re probably just looking for valuable places to hedge. So where will you find them? Again, think of what we just covered. You’re not looking for subtle, valuable role players on good teams. You’re looking for players who will put up big numbers. Putting up big numbers as a rookie usually means playing on a bad team willing to let you make mistakes in the name of growth.
We’re not going to bother dividing into tiers this time because the pool is so small and there are so few realistic candidates. Instead, we’ll simply go through the notable names and determine who is and is not a viable bet at the odds currently available.
The other player projected as a likely future star in the 2025 NBA Draft was Dylan Harper. He can be found at +1200 on BetMGM right now, and that is frankly a sucker’s bet. He shares a backcourt with De’Aaron Fox and Stephon Castle. Devin Vassell takes a lot of shots. Wembanyama uses far more possessions than the average center. Harper just isn’t going to have the ball enough to seriously compete for a stats-based award. That he’s also recovering from a thumb injury is just the icing on this disappointing cake. Harper is going to be a great NBA player. He is not going to win Rookie of the Year.
It’s a similar story for No. 3 pick VJ Edgecombe, available at +1000 at multiple books. He was great at Summer League. He’s supposedly looked great at camp. He is also, at best, fourth in the pecking order offensively for Philadelphia, and could potentially be the No. 3 player at his own position with Jared McCain returning and Quentin Grimes playing for a contract. If Edgecombe is a winning player as a rookie, that’s an enormous win for Philadelphia. It just doesn’t mean he’s likely to put up Rookie of the Year numbers.
Ok, so the No. 2 and No. 3 picks are out. Where can we find value in the lottery? At picks No. 4, 5 and 6. Tre Johnson is available at +1200 at DraftKings. Ace Bailey is available at +1800 on Caesars. Kon Knueppel has the longest odds of the trio at +2800. He is the least interesting of the three just considering the presence of LaMelo Ball and Brandon Miller, not to mention older ball-handlers like Collin Sexton and Tre Mann. There are already quite a few cooks in that kitchen, so he’s likely going to mostly be an off-ball player early on. Still, the odds are promising, and Ball and Miller both have injury histories that suggest they’ll miss time and cede shots to teammates. I wouldn’t be crazy about Knueppel, but he’s a justifiable portfolio addition.
Johnson and Bailey are going to get to take a million shots. Of the two, I’m far more interested in Johnson. High-volume 3-point shooting is far likelier to pop statistically and generate highlights than Bailey’s more mid-range focused game, and while I don’t expect either to be prolific playmakers early on, Johnson, just by virtue of being a guard, is probably going to have more chances to rack up assists. Bailey’s teammate Walter Clayton (+4000) is similarly interesting. He’s already 22, so the learning curve will be shorter for him than most rookies, and he’ll have every opportunity to handle the ball early on.
Go down to No. 8 and you find our first significant long shot, Egor Demin, who is available at +12500. Demin’s major defect is his shooting. This is also an award that Ben Simmons won. Big ball-handlers with the passing gene often look better with NBA spacing than they do at the college level, and the Nets will be eager to let Demin cook after all of the criticism they took for picking him at No. 8. I wouldn’t expect him to win, but 125-to-1 in the event that Flagg bows out of the race for any reason is a very nice flyer. He’s dealing with a foot injury at the moment, though, so don’t get your hopes up too quickly.
And from here, we’re already running out of rookies we’d expect to play enough to make a serious run at this. Derik Queen (+15000) would be very interesting in a world in which Zion Williamson were dealing with a nagging injury or potentially traded… but Williamson is still in New Orleans, and Queen is just too duplicative to put up the requisite numbers. Jeremiah Fears is too low on the New Orleans offensive pecking order. Khaman Maluach will split minutes with several other Phoenix bigs. Cedric Coward will probably play enough, but if Jaylen Wells couldn’t beat Castle in a 3-and-D role for Memphis last season, it’s hard to imagine Coward beating the more imposing Flagg.
Kasparas Jakučionis (+6000) is the last notable name worth a look. There are going to be ball-handling opportunities early in Miami with Tyler Herro injured, and even when he comes back, this is still a pretty limited offensive roster. If he shows he can carry a meaningful load early on, Erik Spoelstra will lean on him. If nothing else, it wouldn’t hurt the Heat to pump up the trade value of one of their youngsters, so if he can play, the chances will be there.
Still, Flagg is the obvious favorite here. If you’re betting on this award, the play might be similar to Paolo Banchero’s race during the 2022-23 season. For a variety of reasons, he was the obvious favorite. Those who bet him early obviously profited. However, surprise contenders emerged as the season progressed. It was Bennedict Mathurin early on and Jalen Williams later. If you’re vigilant, you can catch candidates before the books do. Remember, there aren’t going to be that many of them. Can you think of many Rookie of the Year races with four or five true candidates? It doesn’t really happen. So if you want to bet Flagg, do it. He’s probably going to win. Just stay alert. Someone is going to challenge him, and if you want to have the hedge, your best bet is probably to get a sense of who it will be and grab that player at +500 a month into the season rather than throwing a bunch of darts at the board now.