NBA DFS Core Plays & Top Picks for Tuesday, October 20th
A daily fantasy sports OG, Notorious has been roaming the DFS streets ever since they were invented. He has racked up multiple live final seats and several six-figure tournament wins in his DFS career. Each weekday, Noto will walk you through the featured NBA DFS slates on DraftKings and FanDuel. On the weekends, Taylor Smith will take the reins.
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My friends, welcome back!
It doesn’t matter how many years I do this, the NBA season always finds a way to sneak up on me. We wait all summer for football, and then we get into the MLB playoffs. With so much going on, we don’t get the same lead-up that we do for some of the other sports. With that said, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks building new tables for this article and the NBA First Look. They are much more user-friendly than the old ones and much sleeker as well.
On the personal front, I am attempting to sell my house. Is it a good time to sell? It certainly doesn’t feel like it. Interest rates are extremely high, and the gap between home sellers and home buyers is the largest since 1995 (at least that’s what a graphic on X told me). Here’s the thing — I have been in this house for 15 years. I lived here with my first wife and kept it after the divorce because I wanted a place of stability for my son. I was single for a few years before meeting my girlfriend (hopefully wife soon enough).
She has a son that’s just a little older than mine. We were eventually going to find a place to live together, but then we got the best surprise ever — we got pregnant and were having a baby girl. This sped up that timeline, and they eventually moved into my house. While it’s been amazing having us all under one roof, it’s never really felt like home for them. And I’m not going to lie, I would love a fresh start. So we are selling the house. If you don’t mind throwing any good vibes my way, I would appreciate it.
At this point last year, my daughter was 5 months old. I geniunely can’t believe that she’s now 17 months old. I know everyone thinks that they have the world’s cutest baby, but I do in fact have the world’s cutest baby. She’s perfect, and she’s funny, and her life goal is to keep everyone entertained and make them feel special. I never thought I would have another kid, but now I can’t picture my life without her. Being a girl dad has been the absolute best.
Now, let’s talk some NBA DFS. Over the last few years, the game breakdowns have become less valuable. Half of what we wrote was obsolete hours before lineup lock. On top of that, the injury news section was crowded, and the player ranking tables were claggy. In our prep for this season, we decided to focus on what actually brings value to RG MVP members: the Core Play tables. As you’ll see below, they are miles better than what we had last season.
Let’s try a little manifestation, shall we? We are going to have a great first night of NBA DFS, and I’m going to get a very generous offer on my house this week. Cheers to the new season!
Slate Overview
- 3-game main slate
- 3:00 pm ET – Boston Celtics at Detroit Pistons
- 7:00 pm ET – Philadelphia 76ers at New York Knicks
- 9:30 pm ET – Oklahoma City Thunder at San Antonio Spurs
The Jaylen Brown-less Celtics travel to Detroit to take on the Pistons, who return most of the same lineup from last season. This game tips off at 3:00 PM ET, so make sure to set your DraftKings lineups early. FanDuel decided to leave this game off of their main slate, which starts at 7:00 PM ET.
The Sixers have an incredible roster after the additions of LeBron James, Jaylen Brown, and Anfernee Simons, but they might be a tough team to trust in DFS when everyone is healthy. They square off against the defending champion Knicks tonight in New York.
We round out the evening with a budding rivalry between the Thunder and Spurs. These are the last two Western Conference champs. As we saw in their playoff series, there’s clearly no love lost between these two teams.
Essential NBA DFS Tools & Resources
- NBA DFS First Look
- NBA DFS Optimizer
- NBA Starting Lineups
- NBA Injury Report
- RotoGrinders Discord (ping me in the basketball channel with any questions about the slate)
NBA DFS Core Plays & Top Picks Table
As mentioned in the introduction, our focus this season is on updating the Core Plays table as often as possible. If you have any feedback on it, we’d love to hear it. I built the table so I can add pretty much anything imaginable. If you have an idea that could bring value to you as a reader, please reach out to me in the RG Discord or on X.