MediterraneanGrocery Wholesalers in Phoenix, AZ

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The 2023-24 NBA season tips off on Oct. 24 with Nikola Jokic and the defending champion Denver Nuggets facing LeBron James, Anthony Davis and the Los Angeles Lakers and Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors hosting the new-look Phoenix Suns led by Devin Booker, Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal. Over the next few days plenty of bets will be placed on NBA futures as fans prepare for another exciting season of basketball. The Boston Celtics (+389) have the shortest odds to lift the Larry O' Brien trophy at the end of the season with the Milwaukee Bucks, led by Giannis Antetokounmpo, Damian Lillard behind them at +400. The Nuggets have the third-shortest odds at +420 with the Suns (+600) and Warriors (+850) rounding out the top five.

Here are all the NBA championship, division and conference odds for the 2023-24 season.

All odds courtesy of Caesars Sportsbook

NBA Championship Futures Market

NBA Conference Winner Markets

NBA Division Winner Markets

The Phoenix Mercury’s leadership could have just had T-shirts made up with a middle finger on the front. The effect would have been the same.

A team that has Diana Taurasi and Brittney Griner, two of the greatest players in the history of the game, and that’s won three WNBA titles and played for two more, is now being coached by a journeyman NBA assistant with zero experience in the women’s game. Not as a WNBA assistant, not at the college level, not even for funsies at the local junior high.

But Nate Tibbetts is a “Girl Dad” everybody, so that makes it all OK!

Not content with the skewering they were getting on social media following the leak of Tibbetts’ hiring, the Mercury decided to go full dumpster fire and confirm the news with a cringe-worthy post. Less than an hour before Game 4 of the WNBA Finals tipped off, no less. If new Mercury owner Mat Ishbia and Nick U’Ren really have this dim a view of their team, and the women’s game in general, they should do everyone a favor and put the team up for sale. Now.

It shouldn't be that hard to treat women as equals to men rather than objects to be patronized or, the other default, pitied. Yet here we are. Again.

What’s particularly disheartening about Ishbia and U’Ren’s moves, aside from (waves hand in the air) everything, is they arrived in Phoenix with such promise. Earlier this month, Ishbia said he would invest more than $100 million in a state-of-the-art practice facility for the Mercury and adjoining headquarters for them and the Suns.

"We're going to do it right, and we're going to do it fast," Ishbia said.

This, however, is as far from right as it gets.

It’s possible Tibbetts will end up being a terrific coach. He’s apparently well thought of in the NBA, though not enough to get a head coaching job. But he doesn’t know the women’s game, and it’s an insult to everyone to suggest that doesn’t matter.

Basketball is basketball, but there are different rules between the WNBA and the NBA. Tibbetts also has no familiarity with the personnel, on his team or any other. As a coach, he’s got no experience with the different challenges the women’s game will present. Challenges like pregnancies. Child care. Injuries that are more likely to occur in women athletes than men.

If there was no one else out there who was qualified, the Mercury’s move could be understood. Accepted even. But there are plenty who are, and anyone who cares about the game could easily have given Ishbia and U’Ren a list.

Instead, they looked around and decided a guy with no experience was better than a woman with years of it, for no other reason, apparently, than Tibbetts is a guy.

READ MORE:Mercury owner can learn a lot from Mark Davis about what it means to truly respect WNBA

"We need more male advocates and more women leaders who do the hiring," former Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw said on X. "Women are judged on their success, men on their potential. It’s time we started believing in the potential of women."

For decades, women’s sports have been run by men who thought they were doing the girls some big favor by giving them a place to play. First-class facilities, professional support staff and savvy marketing campaigns – what would women need with that? A pat on the head will suffice!

Thankfully, most people have woken up to the fact that these are world-class athletes, every bit the professionals as LeBron James and Stephen Curry. And the smartest owners have realized there’s a boatload of money to be made, if only you treat your women’s team the way you would your men’s.

It’s no coincidence the teams in the WNBA Finals were Las Vegas Aces and the New York Liberty. Aces owner Mark Davis and Liberty owners Joe and Clara Wu Tsai have poured money into their teams, building dazzling practice facilities and, you guessed it! Hiring the best coaches.

All Becky Hammon has done in her first two years in Las Vegas was bring Davis back-to-back championships.

Men can coach in the WNBA. Plenty do. As McGraw pointed out, 50-plus years after Title IX, more than 60% of women’s teams are coached by men.

But it has to be the right man. Not some guy whose main qualification seems to be that he’s a "Girl Dad."

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.

Nate Tibbetts is the new head coach for the Phoenix Mercury. But his hiring has been greeted with heated discourse over gender bias.

Despite coming to the WNBA with no head coaching experience and no women’s basketball experience, Tibbetts, 46, is set to become the highest-paid coach in the league, ESPN reported. He succeeds interim head coach Nikki Blue, who took the helm after Phoenix fired head coach Vanessa Nygaard in June.

Former Notre Dame women’s basketball coach Muffet McGraw took to social media following the news to call out the inequities baked into the coaching pipeline.

“Breaking news: white man hires white man to coach WNBA team AND makes him the highest paid coach in the league. Gender bias is real,” she wrote. “95% of men’s sport coaches r male and 60% of women’s sport coaches r male- title IX is 50 yet we don’t have equal oppty, equal pay or equal rights.”

Breaking news: white man hires white man to coach WNBA team AND makes him the highest paid coach in the league. Gender bias is real. 95% of men’s sport coaches r male and 60% of women’s sport coaches r male- title IX is 50 yet we don’t have equal oppty, equal pay or equal rights. https://t.co/eqtwdvot44

— Muffet McGraw (@MuffetMcGraw) October 18, 2023

This isn’t the first time McGraw has called out this issue. Back in 2020, she spoke with The Athletic about the “coaching crisis” in women’s basketball, pointing out the shift in the head coaching ranks from women to men.

In 2020, just four of the 12 head coaches in the WNBA were women. And there was just one Black female coach in the league. The league has shifted since then; at the end of the 2023 season, nine of the 12 coaches in the league were women, and three of them were Black.

Up until Tibbetts’ hiring, Becky Hammon was the highest-paid head coach in the league – and with the Aces winning back-to-back titles in her first two seasons, a pay raise may be in her future.

For now, though, Hammon will be dethroned as the highest-paid coach by Tibbetts. And while he could turn out to be exactly what Phoenix needs, his hiring by new Mercury owner Mat Ishbia — and his new general manager Nick U’Ren — has raised eyebrows.

“I really believe that people hire people who look like them,” McGraw told The Athletic in 2020.

To add to the furor, the Mercury used the moniker “girl dad” to describe Tibbetts in their social media announcement of his hire, as if that is a relevant qualification for a head coach of a professional basketball league.

“Imagine if Boy Mom was a qualification for coaching in the WNBA,” wrote one social media user.

“You’re touting being a ‘Girl Dad’ as a qualification? You’re hiring someone with zero experience in the women’s game? AND you’re announcing it the night of Game 4?” wrote USA Today Sports columnist Nancy Armour. “Tell me you don’t care about women’s sports without telling me you don’t care about women’s sports.”

With their unlikely run to the National League Championship Series, the Arizona Diamondbacks had appeared to recapture the attention of Phoenix sports fans. Now, just two games into their NLCS appearance against the Philadelphia Phillies, they seem to have lost nearly all of that goodwill.

Ticket prices for Game 3 of the NLCS, the first in Arizona, have plunged. Where the starting price of the "get-in" (cheapest) tickets were $115, fans can now buy their entry for as little as $15 according to TickPick. That's a stunning 87% price drop.

For comparison, the cheapest tickets for Game 1 in Philadelphia per TickPick's data started at $467. Tickets for Game 2 started at $422.

While it was always true interest from Phillies fans was higher — even at their starting prices, tickets for all three games in Phoenix combined were still cheaper than a ticket in Philadelphia — the difference in price has become shockingly stark.

Bob Nightengale:Embrace the Chaos: Diamondbacks vow to be more aggressive in NLCS Game 3 vs. Phillies

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The Phillies and the importance of the home run

The home run has never been more important than it is in today's version of the game, especially in the postseason.

So far this year, over 52% of all runs scored in the playoffs have come via the home run. According to Baseball Prospectus, "that's the highest proportion in the 30-team era."

Considering that scoring is usually down in the postseason — so far this year, average runs per game have dipped by 0.88 from the regular season — the value of a home run increases dramatically.

Part of why the Phillies have been so successful this year is because they've been able to hit so many while limiting the damage their opponents do. The 2015 Mets hold the current record margin of out-homering their opponents in the postseason, 20 to eight, but the Phillies are on pace to break it, with 19 home runs to their opponents' four.

So far in two games of the NLCS alone, Philadelphia has hit six home runs. They've scored an average of 7.5 runs per game. Meanwhile, the Diamondbacks have hit just one home run and scored three runs across two games of the NLCS, all in Game 1.

There are plenty of other factors in a scoring offense, but the home run has literally never been as important as it has been during the 2023 postseason. For Arizona to crawl back into the series and recapture their fans' attention, it would behoove them to start hitting for more power while — if at all possible — limiting the damage of Philly bats.

ALCS:Perfect no more, Rangers suddenly face Championship Series test: 'Nobody said it was gonna be easy'

NLCS Game 3 starting pitchers

Ranger Suárez (1-0, 1.04 ERA this postseason) will take the mound for the Phillies in Game 3 of the NLCS.

The Diamondbacks will be relying on rookie Brandon Pfaadt (0-0, 3.86 postseason ERA) to keep the team from falling to a difficult 3-0 deficit in the Championship Series.

New Phoenix Mercury head coach Nate Tibbetts is “sensitive” to questions of gender bias prompted by his hiring. But after speaking with Mercury players, he isn’t concerned, he said at his introductory press conference Friday.

The Mercury’s decision to hire Tibbetts, 46, who comes to the WNBA with no head coaching experience and no women’s basketball experience, and to make him the highest-paid head coach in the league, led to heated discourse.

In particular, former Notre Dame women’s basketball coach Muffet McGraw took to social media following the news to call out the inequities baked into the coaching pipeline, saying: “Gender bias is real.”

“I don’t really live online,” Tibbetts said when asked about the criticism over his hiring. “Me speaking to the players, and them welcoming the way that they have, that’s just made me not worried about things that they’re not worried about, to be completely honest.

“I’m sensitive to the situation. I know I’m one of only three male head coaches in the WNBA. And so I take responsibility for that. I know that people are questioning it, and agree or disagree, I’m going to do the best job that I can and do the best for our players and try to put them in positions to get better and be successful. But that’s my main focus.”

Mercury general manager Nick U’Ren also addressed the criticism at Friday’s press conference.

“We know, as we run a WNBA organization, that diversity and opportunity are critical,” U’Ren said. “I would say our process, our candidate pool and our finalist pool all reflected that.”

Tibbetts takes the reins from interim head coach Nikki Blue. Blue took the helm after Phoenix fired head coach Vanessa Nygaard in June. For U’Ren, the decision not to stick with Blue as the permanent head coach came down to what Tibbetts could bring to the table.

“You could ask me 100 questions about Nikki, and 100 times, I’m not going to tell you negative,” he said. “This ultimately was about Nate brought, not what Nikki or any other candidate didn’t have.”

While this will be Tibbetts’ first time coaching in the WNBA, he has held multiple NBA assistant coaching roles. He joined the Orlando Magic in 2021, and previously worked with the Portland Trail Blazers and Cleveland Cavaliers.