Warriors now favored by Vegas to break Bulls' record for wins
Any gambling expert will tell you that betting on an NBA team's win total for a given season is an extremely bad idea, for a variety of reasons. One random injury to a star player can cause the wager to be immediately lost, and it's impossible to predict with any certainty what will happen over the course of an 82-game season that is played over a six-month span.
It's usually even sillier to place these kinds of bets without getting some very strong odds in return, but the Golden State Warriors have been so historically great this season that things may be changing in that regard when considering the proposition of whether or not they'll set the record for most wins in an NBA regular season.
Somewhat incredibly (via ESPN's Ben Fawkes), Vegas oddsmakers now have the Warriors favored to break the 72-10 record set by the 1996 Chicago Bulls.
The Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook opened the prop "Will Golden State win 73 or more games in the 2015-16 regular season" on Nov. 24, when Golden State was 15-0. At the time, the odds on the Warriors breaking the record ("yes") were plus-500, while the odds on them falling short ("no") were minus-700.
After a 118-112 victory Wednesday night over the Miami Heat to get to 51-5 on the season, the "yes" bet is currently minus-125, while "no" is minus-105. The win pushed the Warriors to the best 56-game start in NBA history. The Bulls were 50-6 through 56 games in 1995-96.
This is preposterous, and it might be unprecedented. For those unfamiliar with how all this works, what that means is you'd have to put down $125 dollars to get just $100 in return if you think the Warriors will lose no more than four times over their final 26 games of the season.
While that may seem outlandish, the one thing gamblers have going for them is that Stephen Curry himself has said that the Warriors won't rest players down the stretch, and will attempt to break the record if they get the chance.
"If we have an opportunity to go for it, we’ll go for it," Curry told FOX Sports. "Because how many chances are you going to get to be a team that passes that record, and obviously everybody’s still talking about the 95-96 Bulls — one, because of their record, and two, because they finished it off with a championship. We want to be able to do both, too."
That doesn't mean it will actually happen. But considering the way that Vegas has now flipped the odds, you have to like their chances.