It’s going to be a wild 2022 NBA Draft night.
At the beginning of the week, Duke forward Paolo Banchero could be had at +1000 or higher to be the top draft pick in the NBA Draft.
He steadily climbed down to +250 on Wednesday. On Thursday morning, Banchero was moved from a +250 underdog to a -210 favorite (higher in some areas) on BetMGM Sportsbook.
Up until that, Jabari Smith Jr. was overwhelmingly expected to be the No. 1 overall pick. He opened at -105 and was as high as -600 on some odds boards throughout the last month. Just Wednesday night, he was -550 before dropping to +150 early on Thursday.
While you were sleeping Wednesday night, nearly every sportsbook that offers NBA Draft betting flip-flopped Banchero and Smith as the anticipated top draft pick.
PointsBet, Caesars, FanDuel, and BetRivers all had Banchero as -200 or higher to be the top pick in the 2022 NBA Draft on Thursday morning. That is before any NBA insiders chimed in with their wealth of knowledge when talking to agents and executives from these teams.
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In the midst of all of this chaos, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski tweeted that teams are finalizing their boards and that the expected order for the NBA Draft will be Smith, Holmgren, and Banchero.
Most sportsbooks have since locked betting on the 2022 NBA Draft to reconvene on what exactly is going on here.
Since that tweet by Wojnarowski, FanDuel is the only sportsbook that has odds on the top pick at the time of this writing. The odds have against shifted, making Smith the -6000 favorite to be drafted number one.
Money is still coming in on Banchero, though. He is only +460, suggesting that bettors are pushing back against ESPN’s reporting.
Paolo BancheroGetty Images
Jabari Smith Jr. Getty ImagesFor now, bettors and reporters are in an all-out war for supremacy on this fine Thursday morning.
