NBA DFS Core Plays & Top Picks for Thursday, October 22nd
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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Happy Thursday!
Scores were extremely high in NBA DFS last night, but that was to be expected on the first big slate of the season. It felt like there were more mispriced players than usual on DraftKings. I ended up turning a small profit, although it could have been much better if Jaren Jackson Jr. could have had a better game. He’s one of those players that I never seem to get right. He got into foul trouble in the first half and ended up playing limited minutes in the blowout. Everything else from yesterday’s analysis was on point. It always feels good to be locked in this early in the season.
The quest to sell my house is still ongoing. We had a showing yesterday that ran over by 30 minutes. When we came home, we saw that they were still here, so we decided to do some spying. Our backyard is essentially a park, so we drove to the other side of the street and watched the potential buyers. They seemed like the perfect family for the house, and they seemed to love it (based on what we saw from 200 yards away). They haven’t made an offer yet, but we remain hopeful.
I have never considered myself a handyman. My dad was the best growing up, but he wasn’t a fixer. He was the guy that knew the guy that knew the guy that fixed things, so I never learned a lot of that growing up. However, thanks to prepping this house to sell and to Claude, I feel like I can fix just about anything at this point. We had a leak that led to black mold in the walls of our basement. We took out the walls, cleaned the mold, and put up new drywall. The mold also got under the carpet, so we tore it all out and put in vinyl flooring. We replaced a few parts in our 15-year-old fridge that stopped working. That baby is now humming like new. We installed pavers out back, we fixed and re-routed a bunch of the sprinklers, we replaced a toilet, we took off another toilet to get a toy unstuck from the pipe (kids are fun), we uninstalled a satellite, we installed baseboards and trim, and we painted most of the house.
The moral of the story is that you are never too old to learn new skills. This applies to all of life, including DFS. I know there’s a lot of doom and gloom around AI, but there’s a great side to it. Even if you feel like you are behind everyone else when it comes to your AI knowledge, just try it out. Try creating images, try streamlining your budget, or try fixing some of those little things in your home that you’ve put off for far too long. You can also use AI to refine your DFS process. You wouldn’t believe how much you can learn in an extremely short period of time.
Slate Overview
We only have 2 games on the schedule tonight with a 7:00 PM ET lock. We get our first looks at the Cavaliers and Nuggets, while the Sixers and Thunder will be the first teams to play their second games. The Cavaliers return a very similar roster to last season, although they did add Peyton Watson in the offseason. They’ll travel to Cleveland to take on the new-look Sixers. The Nuggets brought in DeMar DeRozan and Marvin Bagley II, but their core remains intact. They open their season as large underdogs on the road against the Thunder, who looked great in their blowout win over the Spurs on Tuesday.
The smaller the slate, the more ownership condenses. It’s hard to get super contrarian on a slate like this, but there are always ways to be different from a roster construction standpoint. You can target a lot of chalk while simultaneously straying away from the common build. If you are playing tournaments, this should be your main focus on tonight’s slate. Try to build quality lineups that are different enough from the fields that you are playing in. Your construction should obviously differ if you are playing in a 50-person tournament, a 10,000-person tournament, or a cash game.
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
With only 2 games on the schedule, I don’t expect to have much injury news throughout the day. However, I will post any news and ranking updates through lineup lock.