FanDuel’s odds for the ninth overall pick put Brayden Burries at the top of the board, adding another layer to Dallas’ pre-draft buzz.
The Dallas Mavericks are seven days away from their most important draft night in years, and the betting markets have already started forming opinions. FanDuel released odds for the ninth overall pick, and the board tells a familiar story for anyone who has been following Dallas’ pre-draft process.
Before getting into the numbers, one important clarification is needed. FanDuel has released a prop line for who will be selected with the ninth overall pick in the 2026 NBA Draft, not specifically who the Mavericks will take. For the purposes of this article, we are assuming Dallas holds the ninth pick and does not trade it before June 23. If a deal gets done before draft night, all of this becomes moot.
With that said, the odds are worth examining, and understanding how to read them matters before drawing any conclusions.
Sportsbooks set draft prop odds the same way they set any other prop line. They start with publicly available information, consult their own analysts, factor in mock drafts, insider reports, and betting action from sharp money, then assign implied probabilities to each outcome. They also build in a margin on every line, called the vig, which is how the book profits regardless of the outcome.
A +250 line on Burries implies roughly a 28.6 percent probability after accounting for the vig. That is not inside information. It is the market’s best aggregation of publicly available speculation.
With that context established, Brayden Burries sits as the clear favorite at +250. Every other name on the board is +650 or longer. That gap is significant. It reflects the same consensus driving most major mock drafts right now, where Burries has been the most frequently projected player to Dallas. His camp’s reported decision to skip workouts for other lottery teams has only reinforced the belief that this landing spot is where both sides want to end up.
Kingston Flemings and Keaton Wagler are tied at +650 as the second-most likely outcomes. Mikel Brown Jr. and Aday Mara sit at +750. Look across the full board, and the pattern is clear. Of the 13 players listed, the overwhelming majority are guards or guard-forward hybrids.
Mara, at +750, is the only true big man with odds that reflect genuine market belief. The market is telling you that Dallas is almost certainly taking a guard, which aligns with everything reported about its pre-draft process.
The longer odds are interesting, too. Darius Acuff Jr., at +2200, signals that the market does not expect him to fall this far. Koa Peat and Chris Cenac Jr., at +6000, are essentially afterthoughts at this pick.
These odds are speculation priced into a number. They are not more reliable than a mock draft, and they are not less reliable either. They are another data point heading into a week where every piece of information matters. Treat them accordingly.
