New Orleans Pelicans Odds

New Orleans Pelicans Odds & Betting Guide: 2026-27 Season

The Pelicans arrive at the 2026-27 season as one of the longest shots in the Western Conference, and the betting market has been blunt about it. New Orleans finished 26-56 last year, 11th in the West and out of the play-in picture for the second straight season, and books opened its win total near the bottom of the conference. Only a few Western teams carry a lower number. If you want the full board, start with the live NBA odds and work down to New Orleans.

The roster running it back is mostly the one that won 26 games. Joe Dumars, the executive vice president of basketball operations, and general manager Troy Weaver ran a quiet summer: they let Kevon Looney walk, kept DeAndre Jordan for veteran minutes, and added wing Bennedict Mathurin on a two-year deal plus depth pieces in Trendon Watford and second-rounder Jaron Pierre Jr. The headline change is on the sideline. New Orleans hired Jamahl Mosley in May, making him the third coach of the Dumars era after Willie Green's firing 12 games into last season and James Borrego's interim run.

Mosley is the reason the bettable case exists at all. He built top-half defenses in Orlando, and New Orleans ranked in the bottom six defensively last year while shooting a poor 34.7% from three as a team. A healthy Zion Williamson, Herb Jones and Trey Murphy III give him long, athletic defenders to work with, which is the raw material a defensive turnaround needs. The counterweight is health and continuity: Dejounte Murray played just 14 games last season coming back from a torn Achilles, and Williamson has never cleared 70 games in a season.

The last variable hanging over every New Orleans market is Murphy's status. He led the team at 21.5 points per game and drew offseason trade interest from multiple contenders, with New Orleans reportedly asking for three first-round picks. He opened camp on the roster, but a midseason move would reshape the props and futures board in an afternoon, so read every New Orleans number with that in mind.

Western Conference and Southwest Division context

New Orleans projects below the play-in line in a conference where the cutoff keeps climbing. The win total sits in the bottom four of the West, which puts the Pelicans in lottery-adjacent territory rather than the 7-through-10 scramble that decides play-in seeding. That 10th-place line, not the division race, is where New Orleans has to overachieve to matter.

The Southwest is a brutal place to climb out of the basement. The San Antonio Spurs and Houston Rockets both carry win totals in the high 40s and up, the Dallas Mavericks sit comfortably ahead, and only the Memphis Grizzlies are in New Orleans' neighborhood. The Pelicans play these four rivals four times each, 16 of 82 games, and that cluster of games against quality competition is a real drag on the win total. Division titles no longer guarantee a top-four seed anyway, so treat the Southwest standing as a tiebreaker story, not the headline.

The Pelicans angle: New Orleans drew good ATS value as a home underdog last season while covering poorly on the road, and the schedule leans into that split. The Pelicans play a seven-game homestand from January 31 to February 11, their longest of the year, bracketed by three separate five-game road trips earlier in the season, including a New Year's week swing and a Christmas Eve stop in Oklahoma City. Four road games come at altitude, two in Denver and two in Utah, where visiting teams on the second night of a trip historically fade. Check the ATS standings before leaning on any home-dog angle this year.

Pelicans 2026-27 win total

Books set the New Orleans win total at 27.5, with the over priced around -115 and the under around -105. FanDuel opened the number closer to 30 over the summer before it drifted down, and that movement tells you which way early money leaned. The number implies a modest step back from last year's 26 wins in raw terms, but it bakes in a full Mosley season and better health from Murray.

Why the Pelicans under has backers: our projection models frame New Orleans as a sub-30-win team, in line with the posted market near 27.5, and the bear case is simple. A roster that won 26 games added one rotation wing and changed coaches, and its two most important players carry long injury histories. The bull case rests entirely on health and a Mosley defensive jump. Shop the number against our model read before committing, and weigh how much of the total depends on games Williamson and Murray actually play.

Pelicans 2026-27 futures odds

New Orleans sits at the far end of the futures board. Books list the Pelicans around +75000 to win the NBA Finals, with conference and Southwest Division prices to match, so these are lottery-ticket markets rather than live bets. The more realistic New Orleans futures are the derivatives: regular-season win over/unders, a seed market priced around 12th, and whether the team reaches the play-in at all. Those move with the injury report far more than the title number does. Browse the rest of the futures board for the full set of New Orleans prices.

Award futures are thin here. New Orleans has no obvious MVP or Defensive Player of the Year candidate at a short enough price to bet, and the 65-game eligibility threshold for major awards matters acutely for this roster: Williamson has never approached it, which caps any longshot individual case before it starts. If you want a New Orleans award angle, Mosley carries live Coach of the Year appeal precisely because expectations are this low, so a surprise play-in push would put him in the conversation.

Betting Pelicans point spreads

Books set a point spread to turn an uneven matchup into a roughly even bet. The favorite gives points, the underdog takes them.

Pelicans -6.5 (-110) / Grizzlies +6.5 (-110)

New Orleans covers by winning the game by seven or more. Memphis covers by winning outright or losing by six or fewer. The half-point means neither side can push. A winning $100 bet at -110 returns $190.91: the $100 stake plus $90.91 in profit. A losing bet returns nothing. Both sides here are priced at -110, and that is where the book earns. You risk $110 to win $100 whichever side you take. When books post a whole number instead, a game decided by exactly that margin pushes and both sides get their stake back.

New Orleans will be an underdog most nights this season, which is exactly why the home-road ATS split from last year matters. A team can lose outright and still cover, and the Pelicans did that often at home as sizable dogs.

Betting Pelicans totals

Books set a total for the combined points both teams score, then let bettors take a side. Say books post Pelicans vs. Mavericks at 226.5. The over cashes if the two teams combine for 227 or more. The under cashes at 226 or fewer. A half-point total cannot push.

NBA totals follow pace. Two fast teams produce more possessions and more scoring chances, and that matters more to the number than either team's shooting percentage. New Orleans played at a middle-of-the-pack pace last year with a leaky defense, a combination that pushed several games over. If Mosley tightens the defense as intended, the under becomes the more interesting side on New Orleans numbers, especially at home. Cross-check the day's totals against our nightly picks before betting.

Betting the Pelicans moneyline

The moneyline asks one question: who wins. Points do not matter.

Pelicans +200 / Rockets -240

Minus marks the favorite, plus the underdog. At -240 you risk $240 to win $100. At +200 you risk $100 to win $200. Converting to implied probability makes the pricing clearer. The -240 favorite implies 70.6%, and the +200 underdog implies 33.3%. Those sum to 103.9%, not 100%. The extra 3.9 points are the book's margin, and the book collects it whichever side wins.

One thing worth getting straight: a short price is not automatically a bad bet, and a long one is not automatically good. Bettors call heavy favorites bad value out of habit, but value is the gap between real probability and priced probability, and the size of the number tells you nothing on its own. If New Orleans is genuinely a one-in-three underdog in a given game, +200 is underpriced even though it is the dog. When one side carries heavier juice than the other, that tells you where money is landing, not which side is correct. If the Pelicans drift from +200 to +230, bettors backed the other side and the book adjusted its exposure. The matchup did not change.

Pelicans player props

Props are the deepest New Orleans market, and the most sensitive to news. A player prop prices one player's production in one game.

Murphy points: 21.5 (over -115, under -105)

The over needs 22 points. The under needs 21 or fewer. NBA props respond to availability more than anything else. When a teammate is ruled out, his minutes and shots move to the players still on the floor, and books adjust within minutes of the news. On a Williamson rest night, Murphy's and Mathurin's scoring lines climb; when Murray sits, Jeremiah Fears absorbs ball-handling reps that lift his assist number. Check the injury report before betting any New Orleans prop, and check the book's rules for a player who does not play, because they differ between books.

The Pelicans prop angle: our prop projections model each New Orleans line against pace and usage rather than the raw season average, which is where the edges hide on a team this thin. Williamson's efficiency inside keeps his points and rebounds props live, while Murphy's three-point volume makes his makes-threes market the most pace-dependent number on the team. Pull the points props board and compare it to our model before locking anything in, and treat every New Orleans line as one Murphy trade headline away from moving.

Pelicans public betting splits

Public money finds New Orleans mostly when Williamson plays, and the useful signal sits in the gap between ticket count and money handled. Splits break ticket count out from money handled, and the gap is the useful part. If 70% of tickets sit on the Pelicans as a home dog but only 45% of the dollars do, the larger bets are on the other side, and that divergence often points where the sharper money is. New Orleans is not a brand-premium team like the Lakers or Celtics, so it draws less reflexive recreational volume, which makes the splits that do appear cleaner to read.

Tie this back to the totals section: when a New Orleans number carries uneven juice, the public betting data will often show whether tickets or dollars drove it. On a team with this much injury variance, the money percentage is the number to trust.

Prediction markets

Prediction markets list New Orleans alongside the rest of the NBA board in contract terms. On these platforms you buy a position in a market, say the Pelicans to make the playoffs or to clear a win threshold, and the price trades as a percentage that reflects the market's implied probability, settling at 100 if it hits and zero if it does not. A longshot team like New Orleans trades at a low contract price, and that price moves with roster news the same way a sportsbook future does, though the two are separate products priced in different terms.

If you want to explore the format, compare the best prediction market apps and check the current DraftKings promo code for a sportsbook account to sit alongside it.