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V.J. Edgecombe Has the Fifth-Best Odds to Win NBA Rookie of the Year
By Joe Tansey
Published:
It’s never too early to get the V.J. Edgecombe Rookie of the Year hype train going.
After all, the newest Sixer is going to need all sorts of propaganda behind him to dethrone Cooper Flagg.
The markets have settled on +2500 as the Rookie of the Year odds for the No. 3 overall pick.
bet365 gave Edgecombe the fifth-best odds to win the award behind Flagg (-200), Ace Bailey (+800), Tre Johnson (+900) and Dylan Harper (+1000).
BetMGM carries similar pricing with Edgecombe at +2500. Flagg is the favorite at -225, but Johnson (+700) is ahead of Bailey (+800) with Harper at +1100.
If Cooper Flagg lives up to all of the hype, he’s going to win the award.
However, Flagg is entering a rare situation for a rookie where Dallas is a playoff-ready team with two superstars, one of which (Anthony Davis), will command a ton of the ball inside the paint. Kyrie Irving will be working back from a long-term injury, so he’s sort of irrelevant to the Flagg discussion.
Flagg isn’t instantly the best player on his team, like Victor Wembanyama two years ago, so there is a half-decent chance for one of the other players to swoop in and earn the award.
Edgecombe is not in an ideal spot because Tyrese Maxey and Joel Embiid are his new teammates. The potential return of Quentin Grimes and Jared McCain back after his long-term injury layoff will hurt his case as well.
But there’s a chance Edgecombe turns into the Sixers’ No. 3 scorer behind Maxey and a healthy Embiid. Is that enough to win ROY? Maybe, but he at least has a best-case scenario in front of him where he can thrive.
Bailey’s going to put up a metric ton of shots in the Jazz offense, but that certainly doesn’t mean all of them will go in, and also will he be motivated enough to shine for 82 games in Utah on a losing team? Big question for me if you believe all the pre-draft reporting.
Johnson is in a similar spot in Washington. The Wizards are going to be bad again, but his ROY candidacy comes down to how much the Wizards decide to play Khris Middleton and C.J. McCollum. They did that a lot with their veterans this past season.
Harper won’t be option No. 1 in San Antonio with a healthy Wemby, and hell, he might not even be option No. 2 if 2025 ROY Stephon Castle takes another step in his development.
Edgecombe won’t blow away any of his competition out of the gate, but if he turns into a real contributor right away, there’s a chance. We didn’t expect much out of McCain last year, but he was a star for a few weeks before he got hurt.
The Sixers are one Embiid knee tweak away from relying solely on guards and wings to score points, and while I don’t want to wish that on the big man, you at least have to factor it in with the way the last year went.
It’s certainly not a slam dunk to bet Edgecombe in PA, or at New Jersey sports betting apps, but at +2500, it’s worth a sprinkle given his potential role and number of question marks regarding all the top rookies outside of Flagg.
Joe Tansey writes sports betting posts for Crossing Broad and also covers the Philadelphia Union for his Substack site, Union Soccer Blog.