NBA MVP odds: Picking the best bets for basketball's most prestigious award, from favorites to long shots

MVPs tend to stick to a few key trends

The MVP award is by far the NBA's most debated, but it's worth noting that those debates tend to include only a very small number of players. By the end of last season, the race was almost exclusively between Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid, but to some extent, we could have predicted that before opening night. Two major qualifiers have whittled the field down to only a few candidates before the past several seasons even began:

So, by that logic, we have only seven viable candidates this season: Jokic, Embiid, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Doncic, Jayson Tatum, Devin Booker and Ja Morant. Unsurprisingly, when you pull up the odds at Caesars Sportsbook, you'll see that the four favorites all fall within that group. Six of them are 15-to-1 or better. The highest odds in that group belong to Booker at 30-to-1. The field drops off from there. Only two more players are even at 50-to-1 or lower.