NBA First Basket Leaders 2025-26: Edwards, Murray and Queta Tied at 15

Editorial Team «nba First Basket Bets» June 13, 2026 Reading time: 11 min

Three names you would not have predicted at the same number

If you had asked me in October to name the three NBA players most likely to be tied for the league lead in first baskets at this point in the 2025-26 regular season, I would have said Embiid, Wembanyama and possibly Doncic. I would have been wrong on all three. The actual top of the leaderboard reads Anthony Edwards, Jamal Murray and Neemias Queta – each on 15 first baskets – and that triumvirate tells you almost everything you need to know about why first basket pricing on UK sportsbooks has been so hard to pin down this year.

Anthony Edwards (Timberwolves), Jamal Murray (Nuggets) and Neemias Queta (Celtics) tied the NBA lead with 15 first baskets each in the 2025-26 regular season – three different positions, three different opening-play archetypes, and three completely different valuation problems for the books that price them. UK bettors who came into the year defaulting to “back the obvious centre” have been left behind because the obvious centre is no longer the answer.

I want to walk through each of these three names individually – what they do on the opening possession, why their teams keep feeding them the ball, and how UK books are pricing them across the autumn slate. Then I will widen out to the second tier of names worth tracking and explain how the leaderboard correlates with team tipoff results – a cross-reference that turns into a working watch-list for the rest of the season.

Anthony Edwards – the transition pull-up that catches books napping

Edwards leads or co-leads the league in first baskets because the Minnesota Timberwolves play him as their opening-possession scorer, full stop. The ball goes to Edwards on the wing inside the first ten seconds of nearly every game, and either he attacks the rim off a high screen or pulls up from the elbow when the help arrives. His shot profile is the league’s purest opening-possession archetype: high usage, high efficiency on the first attempt, no patience for the offence to move the ball.

What makes Edwards interesting from a betting angle is that he is not always the shortest first basket price on the board even when he probably should be. UK books have spent two seasons pricing him as a second-tier option behind Towns, and the result is that even on Wolves home games his opening price often drifts to 6/1 or 13/2 when the implied probability suggests something nearer 5/1.

The reason for the lag is straightforward. Operators tend to price first basket markets off rolling 30-game samples, and they overweight a player’s overall scoring volume rather than his opening-possession volume. Edwards’ overall stat line looks like a high-usage scorer, but his opening-possession share is even higher than his overall usage – which means a model based on overall usage systematically underprices him.

If you are tracking Edwards across UK operators on a typical regular-season night, the price spread can be 10-15% in implied probability across three books. That is unusually wide for a player at the top of the leaderboard, and it tells you the books still disagree about how much weight to give to his opening-possession scripting.

Jamal Murray – the staggered screen that always finds the gap

I have a soft spot for Jamal Murray’s first basket profile because it is one of the rare cases in the modern NBA where the coach’s opening script is so consistent it borders on predictable. Denver’s first possession – when Murray and Jokic are both on the floor – runs a staggered screen for Murray on the wing, with Jokic acting as the second screener. The defence has to choose: stay home on Jokic and let Murray catch clean for a shot, or switch onto Murray and free Jokic for a duck-in. Murray gets a clean look from 18 feet roughly seven times out of ten on that play.

The result is that Murray converts opening-possession looks at a rate well above his season-long average shooting percentage, because the looks are higher quality than his average half-court attempt. UK books struggle to capture this because they price him as a guard with a 22-point season average rather than as a player whose opening shot is essentially scripted to be the highest-quality jumper of his game.

Murray is also a useful name to track for the method-of-first-basket market because his opening shot is overwhelmingly a jumper rather than a layup or dunk. The “by jumper” line on Murray is consistently the value side when UK books offer it – the method derivative price is often only slightly longer than the straight first basket, despite the fact that the conditional probability of his opening shot being a jumper is closer to 80% than 50%.

The wider point is that some players reward bettors who do their preparation. Murray is one of them. If you cannot tell the difference between his opening-play archetype and that of a typical scoring guard, you will price him as a typical scoring guard and lose modest value over a season. If you can, the books leave money on the table on most Denver home games.

Neemias Queta – the surprise name and what he tells you about Boston

Queta is the name on the leaderboard that most casual UK bettors did not expect, and frankly, that nobody outside Boston should have predicted before October. He is a back-up centre on a contender who has been pressed into first-basket-scoring duty because of injuries up the depth chart and because the Celtics’ opening sets favour a roll-to-the-rim finisher. The result is 15 first baskets in a season where his minute-share is volatile and his usage rate is not particularly high.

What Queta tells you about Boston is that the team’s opening-possession scripting is brutally efficient even when the personnel rotates. The Celtics run essentially the same opening play regardless of which centre is on the floor – high pick-and-roll for the lead guard, with the centre rolling hard to the rim. The roll man finishes a remarkable proportion of those plays because the spacing forces the defence to choose between protecting the rim and chasing the shooters.

From a UK betting perspective, Queta is the leaderboard name where pricing inefficiency is largest. Books rarely list him as a featured first basket option because his name does not register on most fan radars, and the result is sometimes generous prices when he is starting and the matchup is favourable. I have seen him priced at 8/1 to 10/1 on nights when the implied fair price was closer to 6/1.

The lesson Queta embodies – back-up centres on teams with consistent opening-possession scripting are systematically underpriced because the operator’s model overweights name recognition. The usage-rate-on-the-opening-possession metric is the single best predictor of first basket frequency, and it is largely independent of season-long usage rate. Players like Queta surface only when you separate the two metrics.

The second tier of names to watch and why

The leaderboard does not end at 15. The names sitting just below – players in the 11-14 first basket range – are arguably more interesting from a value-finding angle because they are scripted into opening possessions but not yet recognised as such by the broader market.

Victor Wembanyama belongs in this tier. His 2025-26 playoff write-up showed a 20.7% first-basket rate across 58 starts, with the San Antonio Spurs winning the opening tip 77% of the time and Wembanyama taking 27.6% of his team’s first shots. That tip-win percentage alone is league-leading territory, and combined with his first-shot share it produces a fair price that books rarely match. Wembanyama is the first basket bet that has not yet been “discovered” enough to be efficiently priced – though that may change as the season progresses.

Jalen Brunson is the other interesting tier-two name. He posted a 21.2% first-basket rate across 80 starts, took 23.8% of his team’s opening shots, and the New York Knicks won the opening tip at 53.4%, converting to a 61.4% team first-basket rate. Brunson’s case is unusual because his price is often shortened by name recognition – UK books price him as a star scorer rather than as a player with a specific opening-possession profile, and the result is that his straight first basket price sometimes runs ahead of his fair value.

The lesson with the second tier is symmetrical to the first. Sometimes name recognition lifts the price above fair (Brunson), sometimes it drops it below fair (Wembanyama at certain books), and sometimes the player is too obscure to be priced at all (Queta). You have to evaluate each one on its own merits rather than relying on the leaderboard rank as a proxy.

How the leaderboard maps onto team tipoff results

The most useful cross-reference I have built in two years of tracking first basket data is overlaying the player leaderboard against the team tipoff win-rate table. Some teams convert first baskets at radically different rates depending on whether they win or lose the opening tip, and the player on the leaderboard is sometimes the beneficiary of a tipoff edge rather than an opening-play edge.

Edwards’ Timberwolves are a middling tipoff team, which means his 15 first baskets reflect his opening-play scripting rather than a tipoff advantage. Murray’s Nuggets are a slight positive tipoff team thanks to Jokic’s positioning and timing – so part of his 15 is tipoff-driven, part is play-design-driven. Queta’s Celtics fluctuate at the centre position depending on who starts, which means his tipoff support varies game to game.

The takeaway: when a player on the leaderboard is also on a high-tipoff-win team, the first basket price reflects two stacked advantages and the value gap is wider. When a leaderboard name is on a low-tipoff team, the value comes purely from the opening play – and you should focus on home games where the script runs cleanest.

Published by the nba First Basket Bets team.