Durant and Joel Embiid are both players who stand to benefit from the scoring title being awarded to the leader in points per game, instead of just overall points.
Neither would project as especially good bets on raw point totals, with our models projecting Durant to finish 7th and Embiid only 16th.
Things change looking at our per-game projections, though, where Durant ranks 6th and Embiid ranks 10th. We account for Durant playing 76 games and Embiid playing 71 -- the fewest of any player we have in the top-20 for scoring.
Durant Betting Odds (rank): +2300 (8th)
Durant numberFire Points Per Game Projection (rank): 26.64 (6th)
Playing on a dominant Warriors team (and briefly dealing with a rib injury), Durant played only 68 games last year. He finished ninth in the NBA in total scoring but sat sixth in points per game and fourth in points per 36 minutes (minimum 50 minutes played).
The Warriors' absurd arsenal of offensive weapons is both a blessing and a curse for Durant's production. On one hand, they don't need to lean on him to play 36-plus minutes per game, but on the other, his efficiency is way up in Golden State, with a .590 effective field goal percentage, compared to the .530 clip he posted in Oklahoma City.
Our models do account for his slightly limited workload, projecting him for 34.5 minutes per game, while none of the five players we have ahead of him in points per game project for fewer than 36 minutes per game. Even with that taken into account, we get a decent gap in betting odds and points per game. With long odds like this, though, where you're looking at a scoring title needing to be in the top 5% of his potential range of outcomes for the bet to offer value, that lets us also factor in the potential (slim as it may be) that the Warriors underwhelm this year, forcing them to give more minutes to their stars.
Durant also saw a bump in both usage rate (27.8% to 30.4%) and field goal attempts per 100 possessions (23.8 to 25.3) last season, and his volume when he is on the floor is no obstacle.
Embiid Betting Odds (rank): +3700 (12th)
Embiid numberFire Points Per Game Projection (rank): 24.70 (10th)
Embiid has an even more extreme differential in overall and per-game points than Durant, and that is because health looks like it's going to be a career-long concern for the big man.
We did see him make significant strides on that front last season, however. He more than doubled his games played from his rookie year (up from 31 to 63), while playing on back-to-back sets for the first time. What is especially appealing, though, is that he also played significantly more minutes per game.
He ranked sixth in points per 36 minutes last year, and like Durant, the pricing on this bet is appealing enough that, even though it may take an increase in playing time for him to have a good shot at winning, the odds make him worth rolling the dice on.
The +3700 betting odds imply only a 2.6% of him winning the scoring title. Twelveth is exactly where he ranked in points per game last season, so even an identical workload (and no progress in efficiency as a scorer) would suggest him as about a neutral betting value.
His increase in minutes came with increased efficiency, as well (jumping from a .508 to a .514 effective field goal percentage), and our models like Embiid to set a career-high mark in scoring, making him a solid betting value.