Bettors heavily invested in Knicks to win NBA Finals - ESPN

New York has a lot riding on the underdog Knicks.

At DraftKings Sportsbook in New York, the Knicks have attracted nearly half of all money wagered on the NBA Finals winner this season — almost as much as every other team combined.

Now, Victor Wembanyama and the favored San Antonio Spurs are all that stand in the way. On Saturday night, the Spurs opened as high as -220 favorites to win the Finals, with the Knicks installed as approximately +180 underdogs. The price quickly gravitated toward the rested Knicks, and as of Sunday morning, the Spurs were down to -200 favorites.

«Knicks are unsurprisingly very heavily bet on in New York, more so than any other state, both per game and in the futures,» Caesars Sportsbook lead NBA trader David Lieberman told ESPN, adding that both the Knicks and Spurs are liabilities for the house in the book's futures market.

New York swept its last two playoff series and has won 11 straight games. The Knicks haven't played since Monday and will have had eight days off when they tip off against the Spurs on Wednesday in Game 1 of the Finals in San Antonio.

The Spurs, who survived an intense seven-game series against the Oklahoma City Thunder to reach the Finals, are 4.5-point favorites in Game 1.

This is the ninth Finals matchup between a team that swept its previous series and an opponent that was forced to go seven games. The team coming off the sweep went 5-3 in the previous Finals matchups, according to ESPN Research.

Both teams were supported heavily at sportsbooks this season. The Spurs entered the season at 65-1 to win the title at DraftKings Sportsbook and would become the biggest preseason underdog to win the title in at least 40 seasons, according to archive SportsOddsHistory.com.

The