LeBron James Tops an NBA Prop-Bet Index That Measures Buzz, Not Bets

An Unusual Index Putting Metrics Behind Marketing

Player props have become one of the most heavily marketed corners of sports betting, and a new index from Sports Illustrated’s betting arm tries to rank which NBA stars drive most of that interest. The research, shared with Bitcoin.com News, combines a year of social media conversation with two years of Google search demand into a single score.

LeBron James leads the pack with roughly 16,000 prop-related conversations and 5,000 searches. Now with the Philadelphia 76ers in a record-extending 24th season, the four-time NBA champion remains a fixture in prop markets because he produces across points, rebounds and assists, giving bettors several lines to choose from on any night.

Luka Dončić is second with 14,000 conversations and 1,250 searches. Victor Wembanyama, 22, is third with 12,000 for the San Antonio Spurs, making him the highest-ranked player under 25. Anthony Edwards and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander follow with 11,000 each, with Joel Embiid sixth on the same figure, putting two 76ers stars in the top six. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jalen Brunson, Stephen Curry and Nikola Jokic complete the top 10.

The ranking does not follow the conversation counts alone: Brunson sits eighth on 9,300 conversations, ahead of Curry at 9,900 and Jokic at 10,000, because his 2,335 searches are the highest of any player outside the top three. The weighting behind the final score was not disclosed by Sports Illustrated.

The index contains no handle, ticket counts or sportsbook data, so it only captures which players people talk about and search for, rather than which players attract the most money. Conversation totals are also rounded to the nearest thousand, leaving three players tied at 11,000 and separated only by the undisclosed score.

Following the Money

Public data on how much money individual players attract is scarce, but prediction markets offer a pathway. On Kalshi, whose Most Valuable Player market for the 2026-27 season lists 53 players, traders have moved about 1.38 million contracts, and James leads there too with 212,033, or 15.4% of the total. Dončić is second at 139,632.

The rankings diverge after that: Jaylen Brown and Cooper Flagg sit third and fourth on the exchange respectively but appear nowhere in SI’s top 10, while Wembanyama is 13th. The figures count contracts rather than dollars, and James’s contract last traded at $0.01 against Dončić’s $0.14, so the Slovenian leads instead on price-weighted turnover. Kalshi’s own fee disclosures show how much of its volume now comes from combination bets rather than single markets.

Sports Illustrated’s betting pages are operated as a commercial affiliate business, and the research was circulated to media with a request to link back to its NBA sportsbook rankings.