NBA Rookie Of The Year 2027 Odds: AI Panel Prices The Class

Kalshi's Rookie of the Year board is the first market referendum on the 2026 draft class: 16 named rookies, one contract each, about 399,400 contracts traded before any of them plays an NBA game. The market's favorite is not the No. 1 pick: Caleb Wilson, taken fourth by Chicago, trades at 22.5 cents on the board's heaviest volume, ahead of Cameron Boozer at 21, Darryn Peterson at 20, and top pick AJ Dybantsa at 19. We handed the whole field to our eight-model AI panel, price-blind, with every rookie's verified draft slot, landing team, age, and full 2025-26 college line fetched the same morning, plus the award's 26-year winner ledger. Then each seat read the others' anonymized reasoning and could revise. The panel's answer disagrees with the market's order from the very first row, and its reasoning is one word long: opportunity.

The Quick Answer

Eight price-blind AI models make AJ Dybantsa the 2026-27 Rookie of the Year favorite at a 31.8% blend, 12 points above his 19-cent price. They hold Cameron Boozer almost exactly at his 21-cent price (19.6%), trim Darryn Peterson to 12.9% against 20 cents, and price the market's favorite, Caleb Wilson, at 7.3% against 22.5 cents, roughly a third of his cost and the board's loudest disagreement. The panel's value name runs the other way: Darius Acuff Jr. at a 10.2% blend against 6.5 cents, on a Sacramento landing spot every seat independently flagged. The full board, every seat's number, and the one roster pattern that drove all eight books are below.

New to event markets? How to bet NBA on Kalshi covers the mechanics; this page is the rookie layer.

The Market

Kalshi's event (KXNBAROY-27) settles on one rule, quoted from the contracts: "If [player] wins the Pro Basketball Rookie of the Year award in the 2026-27 season, then the market resolves to Yes." Sixteen rookies are listed plus a Tie/Co-Winners contract (0.5 cents, outside the panel's math), with a listed expiration of July 31, 2027 and early close when the award is announced. The 16 named midpoints sum to about 110 cents, so prices run modestly rich, and the volume tells its own story: the most-traded contract is the favorite, Wilson, at about 85,200 contracts, but the second-most-traded is Yaxel Lendeborg at about 62,700, a 7-cent contract on the oldest lottery pick in the class. Two timestamps: panel verdicts were generated the afternoon of August 3, 2026, price-blind; prices were fetched from the exchange at 14:21 UTC the same day, and they refresh on our standard market-pulse cycle with the "as of" stamp as the evidence.

What The Fetched Record Says

The card behind the panel carried each rookie's draft slot, current NBA team, age, college, and 2025-26 college per-game line, all verified against ESPN the same morning, plus each landing team's 2025-26 record and the award's winner ledger back to 2000-01 (most recent winner: Cooper Flagg, 2025-26). The facts that did the heavy lifting: the 2026 lottery stacked its top producers onto its emptiest rosters. Dybantsa went No. 1 to a Washington team that finished 17-65, off 25.5 points per game on 51% shooting at BYU. Peterson went No. 2 to 22-60 Utah off a 24-game, 20.2-point season at Kansas. Boozer went No. 3 to 25-57 Memphis off the class's most complete line at Duke: 22.5 points, 10.2 rebounds, 4.1 assists on 55.6% shooting across 38 games. Wilson went No. 4 to 31-51 Chicago off 19.8 and 9.4 at North Carolina, on 57.8% from the field but 25.9% from three, in 24 games. And Acuff went No. 7 to 22-60 Sacramento off 23.5 points and 6.4 assists on 44% three-point shooting at Arkansas.

How The Panel Read It

All eight seats independently landed on the same mechanism before they ever saw each other's reasoning:

"Opportunity dominates: picks 1, 2, 3, 6 and 7 all landed on 20-25 win teardowns, so usage concentrates exactly where draft pedigree already is." (Claude Opus)

"Dybantsa combines the #1 pick's leash, the league's worst roster (17-65), and the class's best scoring line — the minutes-plus-usage profile that decides this award." (Kimi K3)

The flip side of the same mechanism produced the fades. Every seat, unprompted, flagged the two lottery picks who landed on winning rosters:

"The public will likely overrate Keaton Wagler and Kingston Flemings purely on their top-8 draft slots, ignoring the harsh reality that their drafting teams (Clippers at 42-40 and Hawks at 46-36) are veteran-heavy and will strictly cap rookie minutes." (Gemini 3.1 Pro)

And the panel's most repeated single opinion was about a player most of the market is ignoring:

"Acuff is the board's biggest value: his 23.5 ppg, 6.4 apg, and 44% 3P on a 22-60 Kings roster mirrors Damian Lillard-type outlier profiles that the public will underrate because he fell to pick 7." (DeepSeek V4)

The Revision Round

Each seat then read the other seven's anonymized reasoning and could revise. Cross-model disagreement fell from 1.63 to 0.59 points per outcome, and the round worked the way it is supposed to: the extremes corrected while the disagreements that had reasons behind them survived. Kimi and DeepSeek trimmed the panel's highest Dybantsa numbers (40 to 35 and 38 to 35), while Claude Sonnet, the low book, moved 23 to 30 after crediting the field's argument. The cleanest correction arc belonged to DeepSeek, which had opened with Peterson second at 18%:

"Peterson gets discounted to 12% due to a 24-game college sample, poor efficiency (43.8% FG), and lack of playmaking, despite the #2 slot." (DeepSeek V4, cutting Peterson from 18% to 12% and raising Boozer from 14% to 20%)

Notably, the revision round did not soften the panel's Wilson fade at all: his blend went from 7.4% to 7.3%, with every seat's number sitting between 6 and 8 in both rounds.

AJ Dybantsa, Washington Wizards: The Template, Underpriced

The market says 19 cents and fourth place; the panel says 31.8% and first, the board's biggest absolute gap. The case is the award's oldest template: the No. 1 pick, a 25.5-point college scoring line, and the league's worst team (17-65) with no incumbent usage to fight. Several seats named the same recent precedents from the fetched ledger: Banchero, Wembanyama, and Flagg all won this award from the top of the draft on rebuilding teams. What kept the number near 30 instead of 40 was stated, not vibes: Opus counted the ledger's misses ("#1 picks have actually won only three of the last eight (Cade, Zion, Ayton all lost)"), and Kimi docked the 33.1% college three-point number. Right favorite, wrong price, in the panel's unanimous view; the market has him fourth.

Cameron Boozer, Memphis Grizzlies: Priced Honestly

Market 21 cents, panel 19.6%, the closest match in the board's top tier. The panel's respect is about translation speed: 22.5 points, 10.2 rebounds, and 4.1 assists on 55.6% shooting across all 38 games at Duke is, in multiple seats' words, the most translatable stat sheet on the card, and points-plus-rebounds profiles poll well with award voters. The cap is Memphis's ambiguity: 25-57 reads like a teardown, but a healthy veteran core would tax his alpha usage, and DeepSeek named a Ja Morant trade or shutdown as the single event that would vault Boozer toward the favorite's number.

Darryn Peterson And Caleb Wilson: The Market's Prices, The Panel's Flags

Darryn Peterson, Utah Jazz (20 cents, 12.9%). The No. 2 pick on a 22-60 team should be a co-favorite by slot logic, and the market prices him like one. The panel's discount is specific: a 24-game college season, 43.8% shooting, and 1.6 assists per game read as availability and polish flags, and durability, as Opus put it, is the modal way a top-2 pick loses this award.

Caleb Wilson, Chicago Bulls (22.5 cents, 7.3%). The board's loudest disagreement: the market's favorite, on the market's biggest volume, at a third of his price in every one of eight independent books. The panel's case against is not about talent. Wilson's 19.8 and 9.4 at North Carolina translate (GLM cited the Barnes-and-Castle pick-4 precedent in his favor), but 25.9% college three-point shooting on a 24-game sample caps a modern forward's rookie efficiency, and Chicago at 31-51 was the least-bad landing spot in the top four, a team, as DeepSeek put it, "likely scrapping for the play-in" rather than handing a rookie the offense. A favorite whose case rests on the class's worst spacing number is exactly the kind of price a blind panel exists to argue with.

Darius Acuff Jr., Sacramento Kings: The Value The Whole Panel Found

Market 6.5 cents, panel 10.2%, and the story is that all eight seats flagged him independently in round one, before reading each other. The profile: pick 7, which caps public enthusiasm, carrying 23.5 points and 6.4 assists on 44% three-point shooting into a 22-60 Sacramento backcourt with open lead-guard usage. Four seats reached for the same comparison (the high-volume guard who wins from outside the top five), and the revision round moved him up, not down, with Gemini going from 7% to 11% and Opus raising him to 10 on the field's argument. On a board where the market prices draft pedigree, the panel priced the stat path.

The Volume Trap: Yaxel Lendeborg

The board's second-most-traded contract (about 62,700 contracts) belongs to Yaxel Lendeborg at 7 cents, and the panel prices him at 1.1%, the largest proportional fade on the board. The fetched facts: pick 11, age 23, a 15.1-point college line at Michigan, and a Golden State landing spot at 37-45 that multiple seats described with the same phrase: veteran teams bench rookies. Two seats added that low-usage big profiles have no modern precedent on the winner ledger. Money is not probability, on this board or any other.

Dark Horses The Panel Won't Dismiss

• Mikel Brown Jr., Brooklyn Nets (4¢, blend 4.8%): the one cheap contract the panel prices above its cost. Pick 6 into a 20-62 roster is the emptiest usage vacancy in the class; the cap is a 21-game college sample at 41% shooting.
• Keaton Wagler, LA Clippers (2.5¢, blend 2.8%): the No. 5 pick priced below picks 7 and 11, and the panel broadly agrees: Sonnet filed the 42-40 Clippers under "competitive, veteran-laden teams" that "historically bench rookies."
• Kingston Flemings, Atlanta Hawks (1.5¢, blend 1.9%): real college playmaking numbers at Houston, but every seat cited the same crowding problem: the Hawks won 46 games and already employ Trae Young.
• Morez Johnson Jr., Dallas Mavericks (1.5¢, blend 1.5%): a 62.3% college shooting line, and the panel's uniform read that low-usage bigs on capped roles do not win this award.

The Board

The panel's partition also included a bucket for the five thinnest listed names priced as a group (blend 2.8%) and an unlisted-winner scenario (1.6%).

Every Seat's Round-1 Number

The per-model split before the revision round, top of the board only. On a phone this table scrolls sideways; the board above carries the headline numbers, which average all eight seats' revised estimates.

Every seat on this panel is graded against real market settlements — records to date: GPT 83% on 1,693 graded calls · Claude Fable 85% on 331 graded calls · Claude Opus 86% on 382 graded calls · Claude Sonnet 84% on 363 graded calls · Gemini 85% on 1,718 graded calls · GLM 80% on 1,874 graded calls · Kimi 84% on 1,863 graded calls · DeepSeek 80% on 1,877 graded calls. Recomputed daily; the full scoreboard is public.

Model estimates generated August 3, 2026, price-blind from live fetched data. Models are frequently wrong; the market price reflects real traders' money.

Every number in this piece lands in our backtest ledger the day it is generated and gets graded against the real award announcement on the public model verdict scoreboard.

What Reprices This Board

Preseason rookie prices move on a short list of knowable events: summer-league and preseason usage (the panel's numbers assume the draft-slot minutes hierarchy holds), veteran roster moves in Memphis and Sacramento (a Morant or De'Aaron Fox-shaped transaction was the single most-named repricing event across seats), training-camp injuries in a class whose No. 2 pick already carries a 24-game college sample, and opening-month box scores, which historically settle this award's front-runner by December. This page carries its fetch date for exactly that reason.

ROY Odds Vs Your Fantasy Hoops Draft

For fantasy basketball, a rookie award board is a market-priced usage forecast, and this one says something specific: the class's counting-stat volume lives in Washington, Memphis, and Sacramento, not necessarily where draft slot says it should. Dybantsa and Boozer profile as the only rookies worth mid-round category-league capital, Acuff is the late-round flier whose assist-plus-threes path the market underprices, and the panel's Wagler, Flemings, and Lendeborg fades are minutes warnings that apply double in fantasy. The same panel has priced the veteran side of the league on the NBA MVP board, scored last season's rookie race on the WNBA Rookie of the Year board, and runs the same rookie-opportunity logic on football's Offensive Rookie of the Year board. For nightly projections against live lines once the season starts, Stokastic Prop Tools runs that exercise every slate.

How To Read These Prices

• Eligibility. Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated event-contract exchange, not a sportsbook.
• Liquidity. About 399,400 contracts traded, concentrated oddly: the favorite and an 11th pick hold the two biggest volumes. The 16 named midpoints sum to about 110 cents; compare prices to each other, not to 100.
• Time. The listed expiration is July 31, 2027; capital in this market is committed for a full season.
• **Not advice.

The Bottom Line

The market built this board on draft pedigree and name volume: Wilson first, the top three picks bunched behind him. The panel rebuilt it on opportunity and priced its conviction accordingly: 12 extra points on the No. 1 pick walking into a 17-win vacuum, a third of the price on a favorite with a 25.9% college three-point number, and a doubled number on the pick-7 guard with the class's cleanest stat path. When the award is announced next spring, every number above gets graded in public, on the same scoreboard as the rest of the verdict lane.

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Verdicts generated August 3, 2026, price-blind. Prices as of August 3, 2026, 14:21 UTC. Panel: ChatGPT, Claude Fable, Claude Opus, Claude Sonnet, Gemini 3.1 Pro, GLM 5.2, Kimi K3, and DeepSeek V4, all eight revised in an anonymized cross-read; the blend is the simple mean of the eight revised numbers.

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