Klay Thompson is a Miami Heat player now, officially, and the board that spent all summer guessing where he would land has paid out. The Dallas Mavericks bought out the last year of his contract on Friday, August 21, he cleared waivers on Sunday, and the Heat announced the signing Sunday night. On Kalshi, the CFTC-regulated exchange that ran a yes-or-no contract on each possible Thompson destination, the Miami contract settled at $1.00 on Monday evening. A five-time All-Star with four championship rings now shares a locker room with Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bam Adebayo, which sounds like the kind of sentence that should move a championship market.
The surprising part is what happened next. Kalshi also runs a market on who wins the 2027 NBA title, one contract per team, and the Miami contract was quoted at 3 cents bid and 4 cents ask (buyers offering 3, sellers asking 4) before the buyout news, through the signing weekend, and again the morning after the next-team market settled. Traders did not ignore the news. Miami's title contract had its two busiest trading days since at least August 17 while Thompson was clearing waivers, and the price still never moved. Why a market can get loud without getting any different is the question this page answers, and the answer says a lot about what the crowd thinks a 36-year-old shooter adds to a Giannis team.
The Quick Answer
- Klay Thompson Signed A Two-Year, $11.5 Million Contract With The Miami Heat on Sunday, August 23, after Dallas bought him out and he cleared waivers, per the Associated Press. The second year is a player option.
- Kalshi's Thompson Next-Team Market Settled On Miami at $1.00 per contract on August 24, closing a board that had Miami trading at 44 cents hours before the buyout report.
- The Heat's 2027 NBA Title Contract On Kalshi Barely Moved, and the day-by-day tape of the signing weekend shows a market that got loud without getting any different.
The final tape on the next-team market, the full top of the 2027 title board, and the Heat win-total prices that show where traders actually put the new roster are all below.
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What Klay Thompson Signed, And What He Gave Up To Sign It
Thompson had one season left on the three-year, $50 million deal he signed with Dallas in July 2024, and it was due to pay him $17.5 million for 2026-27. With Dallas shifting its minutes and its timeline toward Cooper Flagg, the 2025-26 Rookie of the Year, a 36-year-old shooting guard's role had nowhere to go. Dallas and Thompson agreed to a buyout on Friday, and once he cleared waivers on Sunday he signed with Miami: two years, $11.5 million, a player option on the second season, and a 15 percent trade kicker (a bonus paid if he is traded), per the AP. Early reports, including ESPN's, had the Heat deal closer to $13 million; the final number came in lower, and Hot Hot Hoops reports Thompson gave up nearly $10 million in the Dallas buyout to make the move.
Heat president Pat Riley called him "one of the most iconic players to ever suit up in the NBA" in the team's announcement, and the basketball case is straightforward: Thompson is a career 40.9 percent three-point shooter joining a roster whose best player, Antetokounmpo, needs the floor spread as wide as it will go. Miami agreed in June to acquire Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis from Milwaukee, sending out Tyler Herro, Kel'el Ware, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kasparas Jakucionis, three first-round picks, a 2030 pick swap, and a 2033 second-rounder, per Yahoo Sports. Thompson is the shooter that trade was always going to need.
Hold one number from his Dallas season, because it comes back when the title market gets its turn: Thompson averaged a career-low 11.7 points last year on 39.3 percent shooting and 38.3 percent from three, both career lows, in 21.7 minutes a night across 69 games, per ESPN. The Heat are paying for the shooter he was; the market is pricing the one he is.
The Next-Team Market Settled At $1.00: A Worked Example Of The Final Tape
Kalshi's Thompson market (ticker KXNBANEXTTEAM-26KTHOMPSON31) worked like every market in the exchange's NBA next-team family: one contract per destination, each trading between 1 cent and 99 cents, the winning leg paying $1.00 once the signing is official. If the format is new to you, our walkthrough of how Kalshi's sports markets work covers the mechanics; the short version is that the price is the crowd's live estimate of the odds.
Here is the whole life of the market in one table, from before the buyout report to settlement:
| Leg | Before the report (Fri.), in cents | Friday night, 9:04 p.m. ET | Settled, Mon. Aug. 24 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Miami Heat | 44 | 99 bid | $1.00 |
| Los Angeles Lakers | 38 | 0-1 | $0 |
| Dallas Mavericks | 32 | 0-1 | $0 |
| Philadelphia 76ers | 11 | 0-1 | $0 |
Prices from Kalshi's Thompson next-team market. Friday prices as of August 21, 2026; the Miami contract settled yes at $1.00 on August 24, 2026. A dead leg quoting 0-1 cents shows a penny ask with no buyer behind it, which is a displayed price rather than a live one.
The row that still deserves the most attention is the Lakers at 38 cents. Before the report, this board read as a genuine three-way race, with Los Angeles priced close enough to Miami that one beat-writer post could have flipped the order. Thompson reportedly wanted Los Angeles, the Heat were the suitor NBA circles kept naming, and Dallas had not yet agreed to let him go. Traders converted that public record into one number per team, and the 44-cent Miami favorite was the crowd concluding, hours ahead of confirmation, that the Heat fit was the one the reporting kept pointing toward. One caution on reading those cents as chances: the four legs added up to 125 cents, so the raw prices ran rich, and 44 is best read as the order of the board rather than a 44 percent probability.
The volume tells the rest. The Miami leg traded 20,226 contracts in the final 24 hours before Friday night's 99-cent bid, against 29,085 contracts of lifetime volume at that point, roughly 70 percent of the market's life compressed into one day. By settlement on Monday the lifetime total had grown to 36,941 contracts, with 28,712 still open when Kalshi paid them out. Those extra 7,856 contracts are the part worth sitting with: money that changed hands after the answer was already priced at 99 cents, buyers paying 99 to collect a dollar once the paperwork cleared, and sellers taking 99 now rather than waiting the weekend for the last penny. Walk the arithmetic of the trade the price history was offering on Friday afternoon: 100 Miami contracts at 44 cents cost $44 before fees, were worth $99 at Friday night's bid, and paid $100 at Monday's settlement. The whole edge lived in the 44. A next-team market can sit half-asleep for weeks on thin interest, then trade most of its life in the hours when the answer arrives, and then keep trading a little more while the winners wait to be paid.
What The 2027 NBA Title Market Paid For The Giannis And Klay Heat
Now the market that did not settle. Kalshi's 2027 Pro Basketball Champion market (KXNBA-27) lists a contract on every team, and it had traded about 25.4 million contracts lifetime as of August 25, 2026, with roughly 19.7 million still open and about 165,000 changing hands in the prior 24 hours. Here is the top of the board as of August 25, 2026, at 3:12 a.m. ET, with each ask converted to the sportsbook moneyline a bettor would recognize:
| Team | Bid / Ask | Implied chance (ask) | Moneyline equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|
| San Antonio Spurs | 23¢ / 24¢ | 24% | about +317 |
| Oklahoma City Thunder | 22¢ / 23¢ | 23% | about +335 |
| Philadelphia 76ers | 9¢ / 10¢ | 10% | about +900 |
| New York Knicks | 8¢ / 9¢ | 9% | about +1011 |
| Boston Celtics | 4¢ / 5¢ | 5% | about +1900 |
| Miami Heat | 3¢ / 4¢ | 4% | about +2400 |
| Denver Nuggets | 3¢ / 4¢ | 4% | about +2400 |
Kalshi KXNBA-27 prices as of August 25, 2026, 3:12 a.m. ET. "Bid" is what buyers will pay right now; "ask" is what sellers want. The moneyline column converts the ask price to standard American odds so you can compare it with a sportsbook. Only the top of the board, the seven contracts asking 4 cents or more out of 30, is shown; the full live board with every team is on its own page.
Miami is why this page exists. Four cents to win a dollar is a longshot price, sixth on the board and tied with Denver, a full point behind Boston and less than half of what the market gives Philadelphia, the team that signed LeBron James. Read it plainly: after adding a two-time MVP in June and a four-time champion in August, the crowd on Kalshi gives the Heat about one chance in 25 of winning the 2027 NBA title, and it gave them the same chance before the Thompson news existed.
By lifetime volume, the row is also the busiest thing on the board that is not Philadelphia. Miami's title contract has traded about 2.37 million contracts, with 1.61 million still open, second among all 30 teams behind the 76ers' 7.2 million. Much of that history belongs to the summer's other Miami story, Kalshi's LeBron James next-team market, which had the Heat at 44 cents the day before he chose Philadelphia; the title contract's July tape, further down this page, shows exactly what that rumor did to the price. Our AI panel, a set of models that score a board without seeing its prices, also faded a Miami-heavy DeMar DeRozan board in between, cutting the Heat from the market's roughly 32 percent to about 14. The Heat have been the market's favorite thing to argue about all summer while sitting sixth on its list of likely winners.
The sportsbooks landed in the same place. After the Thompson news, DraftKings had the Heat at +3000 to win the title, outside the top ten, per Yahoo Sports, with the Spurs and Thunder co-favorites at +270. A reader who remembers the Heat at 18-1 in June is not misremembering. The books moved them in on the Antetokounmpo trade, then drifted them back out over a summer in which LeBron James picked Philadelphia and the outgoing pieces of the trade (Herro, Ware, and Jaquez) left the rotation thinner than the two-star billing suggests. Portis, Tim Hardaway Jr., and rookie Ryan Conwell are the depth, and the Thompson signing only gets Miami to 13 of 15 standard roster spots, per Hot Hot Hoops. Kalshi's 4-cent ask works out to about +2400 and its 3-cent bid to about +3233, so the exchange's spread brackets the DraftKings number almost exactly. Two very different crowds, one with a bookmaker's margin built in and one trading peer to peer, priced the Giannis-and-Klay Heat within a few cents of each other, and the exchange never repriced them on the signing.
The Signing Weekend, Day By Day: 120,000 Contracts, One Spread
I promised the volume story, and it is the strangest thing on this page. Here is Miami's title contract, one row per day, from the week before the buyout through the morning after settlement:
| Day (2026) | Close | Bid / Ask at close | Contracts traded |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wed. Aug. 19 | 3¢ | 3¢ / 4¢ | 26,091 |
| Thu. Aug. 20 | 4¢ | 3¢ / 4¢ | 3,687 |
| Fri. Aug. 21 (Buyout Reported) | 4¢ | 3¢ / 4¢ | 950 |
| Sat. Aug. 22 | 4¢ | 3¢ / 4¢ | 63,191 |
| Sun. Aug. 23 (Signing Announced) | 4¢ | 3¢ / 4¢ | 57,249 |
| Mon. Aug. 24 (Next-Team Market Settled) | 3¢ | 3¢ / 4¢ | 21,030 |
| Tue. Aug. 25 (Partial) | 4¢ | 3¢ / 4¢ | 7,227 |
Daily price summaries for Kalshi's KXNBA-27 Miami contract, as of August 25, 2026. "Close" is the last trade of the day; the bid and ask are the standing quotes at that moment.
Saturday is the row to read twice. The day after the buyout, Miami's title contract traded 63,191 contracts, more than 66 times Friday's total and the busiest day in the window, and Sunday added 57,249 more while the Heat were announcing the deal. Roughly 120,000 contracts changed hands over the signing weekend, and the quote at the close of every one of those days was 3 cents bid, 4 cents ask. To be fair to the baseline, this contract prints real volume on quiet days too (Wednesday the 19th did 26,091 with no Thompson news attached), which is why the volume alone is not the evidence. The evidence is the spread holding at 3 and 4 through all of it. The close flickered between 3 and 4 because that is the only place a trade can print inside that spread. Nobody ever paid 5.
Volume without a price change means the two sides of the trade agreed. Buyers who thought Thompson made Miami a better title contract found sellers happy to hand them 4-cent contracts all weekend, in size, and the sellers never ran out. That is what a fully priced event looks like from the outside. The next-team market already had Miami as the 44-cent favorite on Friday afternoon, so most of what the signing could tell the title market was in its price before the weekend started. When the signing arrived, the only thing left to price was the step from "favorite" to "certain," and on a 4-cent contract that step rounds to nothing. There is a basketball reason under the market reason, too, and it is the number I asked you to hold: a title market moves on Antetokounmpo-sized news, and the sportsbooks moved this one in June, taking the Heat from 30-1 to 18-1 on the trade. A shooter coming off an 11.7-point season, at 36, on a $5.6 million salary, is the kind of addition the crowd prices as depth, not as a new tier.
Where A Belief In Thompson Would Show Up: The Heat Win-Total Market
If the title contract is where the Thompson signing shows up as nothing, the win-total market is where a view on his fit would be priced if anyone held one strongly. Be clear about what we can and cannot see here: Kalshi's Miami win-total prices are a single snapshot with no pre-signing tape behind them, so read what follows as a standing quote, not a reaction. Kalshi's Miami total-wins market (KXNBAWINS-27MIA) lists a contract on each threshold, "45 or more wins," "50 or more wins," and so on, each one paying $1.00 if the Heat meet or exceed that bar in the 2026-27 regular season. The book is thin, about 5,600 contracts traded across all ten thresholds as of August 25, 2026, so the prices below are wide, and I have listed the bid and ask rather than pretend the midpoint is a real quote.
| Heat Win Threshold | Bid / Ask | What the ask implies |
|---|---|---|
| 40 Or More Wins | 73¢ / 82¢ | about an 82% chance |
| 45 Or More Wins | 53¢ / 61¢ | about a 61% chance |
| 50 Or More Wins | 35¢ / 36¢ | about a 36% chance |
| 55 Or More Wins | 10¢ / 16¢ | about a 16% chance |
Kalshi KXNBAWINS-27MIA prices as of August 25, 2026, 3:12 a.m. ET. Four of the ten thresholds shown; the 45-win contract carries about 3,050 of the market's roughly 5,600 lifetime contracts, and the 50-win contract about 1,640. The 55-win contract has about 630 behind it; the lower and extreme thresholds are thin or one-sided.
Start with 45 wins, because it lines up with the rest of the world. Las Vegas set the Heat's regular-season win total at 46.5 on August 18, three days before the buyout was reported, per Hot Hot Hoops, which means the books called 46 or 47 wins the coin flip for a roster that did not yet include Thompson. Step one rung down from that line and 45 or more wins should come in somewhat better than a coin flip, roughly six in ten depending on how much uncertainty you put around a preseason number. Kalshi's 53-cent bid and 61-cent ask straddle that. The bid side is a touch cheaper than that line implies, and on a book of about 3,000 contracts the gap is as likely to be thin-market noise as a real disagreement. One row down, 50 or more wins at 35 to 36 cents is almost exactly what a 46.5 line implies on its own. Put the two together and the sharper point lands: the exchange's win prices sit right on a number drawn without Thompson in it, so on the one board where enthusiasm for the signing could have shown up as a price, it has not shown up either. A 50-win Heat team is usually a top-four seed in the East; the crowd files that as the upside case, and the 4-cent title price is the same view carried through to June.
The gap between those two thresholds is where a belief in Thompson's fit would be priced if it arrives. The title market barely carries that view; the 50-win contract at 36 cents is where it would register first, and our guide to trading NBA markets on Kalshi covers how fees and thin books change the arithmetic on a contract like that. The same spread logic decides whether a price is real on any exchange, which is why our Kalshi vs. Polymarket comparison spends more time on liquidity than on prices. As always, re-run the numbers at the price you are actually offered; a 36-cent quote on a book this thin can be a different number by the time you read this.
The LeBron Board Was The Warning, This Board Was The Lesson
Two Miami boards, one summer, both with the Heat at 44 cents to land the player. On LeBron's, the 44-cent Miami favorite went to zero and a 9-cent Philadelphia contract paid $1.00, because the price was built on a deleted YouTube link for a press conference that never happened. On Thompson's, the 44-cent Miami favorite paid $1.00 on Monday, because the price was built on the buyout reporting, an obvious shooting need, and cap math that pointed one direction. The screen showed the same number both times. What the title market did on each of those weekends is the part nobody has put side by side:
| Miami's 2027 Title Contract | Day before the decision | Decision day | Day after | Contracts traded, three days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LeBron Weekend (July 23-25) | 10¢ close, 14¢ high | 9¢ close, 12¢ high | 4¢ close, 3¢ / 4¢ | 348,781 |
| Klay Weekend (Aug. 22-24) | 4¢ close, 3¢ / 4¢ | 4¢ close, 3¢ / 4¢ | 3¢ close, 3¢ / 4¢ | 141,470 |
Daily price summaries for Kalshi's KXNBA-27 Miami contract, as of August 25, 2026. LeBron James announced Philadelphia on Friday, July 24; the Heat announced Thompson on Sunday, August 23, so "decision day" is the announcement day in each row and each row is an explicitly labeled three-day window (the Klay row runs Saturday through Monday, so it includes the day the next-team market settled).
Read the LeBron line first, because it changes how the Klay line reads. In the week the deleted link circulated, Miami's title contract climbed from a 4-to-5-cent quote on July 16 to a 14-cent high, roughly tripling the Heat's implied chance on a rumor, and on July 25, the day after he chose Philadelphia, it fell back to 4 cents on 181,539 contracts, the busiest day of the LeBron week by a wide margin. The crowd moved the Heat's title price for a hope and refused to move it for a fact. Read together, the two weekends say the same thing about what the market believes: a LeBron-and-Giannis Heat was a different tier of team and a Klay-and-Giannis Heat is the same team with better spacing. The only way to tell a 44-cent favorite that will pay from one that will not, on the day it matters, is to ask what the traders could actually know, and the title market's July tape shows what happens when the answer is "a YouTube link."
The Bottom Line
Klay Thompson chose Miami, the next-team market paid its holders a dollar, and the title market shrugged, at volume. Two Kalshi markets are now pricing the same roster from different distances: the 2027 championship board, as of August 25, 2026, treats the Giannis-and-Klay Heat as a longshot the signing did not change, and the win-total board is where any belief that the shooting matters actually shows up as a price. That is the honest place to watch the Heat through camp, and the daily Kalshi board tracks how both markets move as October gets closer. Our free expert picks hub posts free picks across today's board every day, and come late October, when the sportsbooks hang Heat game lines with Thompson's shooting priced into the number, our live odds screen lets you shop that number across every major book the way Friday's traders shopped the 44 cents.
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