Durant's injury drops the Warriors' NBA title betting odds to a season low

Only a team like the Golden State Warriors could absorb a loss as big as Kevin Durant, but that’s not to say the defending NBA champs aren’t reeling heading into Game 6 of their second-round playoff series with the Houston Rockets. 

The NBA betting odds certainly think the Warriors’ run at a third-straight title (and fourth in five years) has hit a bump with Durant now out for the remainder of this series, with the rest of his postseason availability up in the air. According to DraftKings sportsbook, Golden State, which leads Houston 3-2 in the series, is now +110 to win the NBA Championship – the team’s shortest NBA futures odds all season. 

The Dubs opened the 2018-19 campaign as -200 favorites – fresh from signing free-agent center DeMarcus Cousins in the summer. The Warriors were priced at -210 entering the playoffs and sat at -195 after winning the opening two games versus the Rockets.

The series price on this conference semifinal has the Dubs listed around -270 faves, with two chances to close out the series in Game 6 Friday and Game 7 back home, if necessary, Sunday. The Rockets are currently priced around +210 to come back and win the series, and according to DraftKings, are drawing 92 percent of the series-price action since the injury to Durant.

Golden State opened as a 5-point road underdog in Houston for Friday’s Game 6 and immediately that spread was bet up to +7.5 with news that Durant would sit out with what is being reported as a calf injury. 

Durant, who is averaging 34.2 points so far in the 2019 postseason, missed only three games all season for the Warriors, with the team going 3-0 SU and 2-1 ATS with a 0-3 Over/Under record. That included a 106-104 victory at Houston on March 13, in which Golden State closed as a 4-point road pup and got big efforts from Klay Thompson (30 points), Cousins (27), and Stephen Curry (24). 

Cousins, of course, tore his quadriceps in the first round of the playoffs and his status for the remainder of the postseason is undetermined. That’s left Golden State with a gap in the middle, and with Durant’s length and 5.2 rebounds per game missing the final two games of the series, the Warriors get small very quickly.

Thursday’s Game 6 total opened at 212 points and has dipped to 211.5 at some books. These teams are 2-2-1 Over/Under in the first five games of the series but have produced an 8-20-1 O/U mark – 69 percent Unders – in their last 29 clashes inside the Toyota Center. 

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