Listen — NFL DFS you can build lineups on the toilet, as Adam Levitan of Establish the Run has often noted. This doesn’t mean they’re good lineups, but still: You can build them on the toilet. Injury reports come out days in advance, and there are rarely “game time decisions” you need to worry about.
MLB DFS? Lineups come out hours before game time, and most of the time, you know what the lineup is going to be anyway. Easy to parse.
But NBA DFS? Playing NBA DFS — well, playing it correctly — is like the old Road Runner cartoons. Basically, the NBA slate is the Road Runner, and you are Wile E. Coyote. You think you’ve got it all figured out, and then BLAMMO, your rocket explodes over a cliff and you’re dead.
Bottom line — and this isn’t breaking news to anyone who plays NBA DFS — but if you’re not glued to your computer/phone from lock up until the last game of the slate is tipping off, you may as well just send your money directly to the min-cash winners.
Thankfully, DraftKings has taken some mercy on our poor souls in recent years, usually lopping the west coast games from the main slate (especially on busy nights). This is welcome for us here on the east coast, as now I just need to ignore my wife and children from 6:45 p.m. until about, at the latest, 9 p.m. (And wow, now I really wish I lived on the west coast, as those times become 3:45 p.m. and 6 p.m., which is much more reasonable).
Of course, my wife is used to this at this point, knowing that at any given moment on a random Tuesday evening I’ll say something like — well, exactly like — “gimme a minute I gotta check my lineups.” As for my kids? Well, I’ve been playing NBA DFS for 11 years, my oldest is 15, so to them, this is just normal — something they will be able to discuss with their therapists when they’re adults.
Now, to be honest, I’m not completely ignoring them anymore, mostly because I’m usually only putting in one or two lineups in the $4 lotteries. This is more for fun and a little sweat than seriously trying to be a full-time DFS’er.
But it wasn’t always like this. Nope, in the beginning of my DFS career, I was putting in… well, significantly more time and money into NBA DFS. I’d rather not put the numbers in print for fear my wife may see it.
And when the kids were younger, it made it all the more difficult, although I became an expert — like, I’m willing to bet I was THE expert — in giving children a one-handed bath while trying to jam Russell Westbrook and DeMarcus Cousins into one lineup. Seriously: I could shampoo, condition, soap, and sing the Barney theme song with my left hand while simultaneously max-entering tournaments. It was a sight to behold.
Of course, NBA DFS was juuuuuuust a little bit easier back then. Today, cracking the NBA DFS code is about as difficult a game to crack as there is in the DFS world (IMHO). Between the projections and the sims — and the sheer number of people using them — you have to, 100%, get off the chalk, which is painful to do and so… well, and so I don’t usually do it. Hence, one or two cheapo lineups a night, playing a lot of chalk, and hoping I catch lightning in a bottle once or twice a season.
I should probably retire from NBA DFS, but that’s no fun and so I won’t.
Instead, I’ll just continue doing the wrong things — ignoring my family AND playing the chalk — while I wait for MLB DFS. Tick-tock.
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