Slam Dunk Contest Odds

Each year, the NBA Slam Dunk Contest odds come out, and the favorites are quickly identified from the list of participants to win the Slam Dunk Contest. The winner is usually the most athletic and most creative of the four participants.

The odds are set as futures, with all four participants odds to win, and then in the finals, you will see a moneyline wager – pitting the two against each other. Also, you have to keep in mind that the judges can be impartial and it’s much riskier to bet on something that depends on someone’s opinion.

For our example, we will look back to the 2020 Slam Dunk Contest odds.

• Aaron Gordon +125
• Derrick Jones Jr. +200
• Pat Connaughton +400
• Dwight Howard +500

In this case, this futures bet – you will need to decide who you think will win the Slam Dunk Contest. Based on these odds, Aaron Gordon is favored, and Dwight Howard is the biggest underdog.

A $100 wager would payout:

• $225 on Gordon
• $300 on Jones Jr.
• $500 on Connaughton
• $600 on Howard
• Now that we know that Connaughton and Howard were eliminated after the first round, we can look at the two finalists, Gordon and Jones Jr.

The finals will be a moneyline wager between the two.

• Gordon -120
• Jones Jr. +250

At this point, and really before the event began, everyone expected Gordon to win. He is by far the most talented and has been robbed in the past (2016), and as we now know, 2020 as well. So in this case, if you took Gordon, you would have had to wager $120 to win $100. If you took Jones Jr., you would have had a pretty good payday as a $100 wager would return $250 plus your initial $100.

While it’s not always profitable to back a favorite, you can’t simply base your whole betting strategy on the underdog bet moving forward based on this past Dunk Contest – because most times the underdogs don’t win. The dunker that wins over the crowd and gets the biggest applause usually wins, however, that was not the case in 2020.