The New Orleans Pelicans start their regular season tomorrow with championship aspirations.
With Zion Williamson returning to a team that made the playoffs last season, the Pels are early season darlings of many NBA talking heads, and hope to join the Western Conference elite this season.
If New Orleans can make that leap as a team, it will lead to some All-Star appearances and possibly some individual hardware for their players.
Here are the guys who have listed odds for each NBA season award and which ones are your best value bets.
New Orleans Pelicans: Odds for NBA season awards
MVP
Zion Williamson: +2500
Brandon Ingram: +13000
Zion Williamson has the best MVP odds of any Pelican, and they plummeted by nearly half after his first appearance in the preseason. If Zion stays healthy, he has a chance to get into the discussion, which is why I love this bet at these odds (loved it even more 10 days ago when they were +4000).
The books hedged against a tide of Zion MVP bets, but it is obviously a long shot for a reason, as he not only has to stay healthy, but the team would need to make a big leap, and he would have to beat out the mostly foreign competition for the award.
Brandon Ingram was the only other Pelican listed and he’s being given pretty high odds to win the award even though he is coming off arguably his best season in the NBA.
But it’s hard to see a path for Ingram to win the award, as Zion is going to get the credit if the team takes off this season even though BI was the one who carried them to the playoffs last year.
Ingram is perpetually underrated, so he’d probably have to lead the team in scoring and to a top four seed to be considered for the award. The hype and the odds are with Zion, so he’s the better bet of the two.