What’s up everyone and welcome to Ben’s Building Blocks! If you’ve never read my content before, welcome. To those that have, welcome back. I truly appreciate everyone that reads and supports during NBA season. This article is designed for me to highlight the top plays of the day. Obviously, things can change rapidly in the NBA with injury news close to lock, so I would be sure to subscribe to our premium package for access to our Final Thoughts cheat sheet, our premium discord channel and my core plays. Our Core Plays product gives you the ability to tail all of our analysts in your contests each night. We do the work for you, and you simply plug and play with our premium Core Plays. With that being said, let’s hop into the plays…
Building Blocks
CJ McCollum
McCollum is in one of the best match-ups on tonight’s slate against the Houston Rockets. Houston has been horrible at defending guards this season, and McCollum will once again dominate the Pelicans offense with no Brandon Ingram or Zion Williamson. We’ve seen a different sort of ceiling from CJM this season, and he’s topped 40+ real points twice in the last ten games. He leads this team in usage rate and point per minute production, and if Houston can keep it competitive at all I think we could see another ceiling-level output from McCollum on Wednesday.
Russell Westbrook
This is not an easy match-up by any means, but with LeBron James out — Westbrook is thrust into consideration against the Heat. Los Angeles is already without Anthony Davis, and now will be down both James and Lonnie Walker on Wednesday. We have over a 100 minute sample-size of Westbrook on the floor without these three players. This sample results in a massive 36% usage rate and 1.25 fantasy points per minute from Russ. That’s a huge 8% usage rate increase.
I will note that Dennis Schroder gets a nice bump as well — getting the highest point per minute boost on the team after removing those three players. Given he is significantly cheaper than Russ, he is likely to draw high-ownership tonight. Both are strong options in all formats even on a big slate like this.
Value Plays
Jalen McDaniels
Things are definitely changing rapidly on this slate with the late-news already breaking…but one thing holds true and that’s McDaniels being one of the top values. He will be starting for the injured Gordon Hayward once again tonight, and has topped 28+ minutes in each of his last two games. We have him projected for over 30 minutes tonight, making him one of the top point per dollar options in our projections. This game features the second highest O/U on the slate at 236 — and grabbing multiple players from this game is a viable strategy in both cash games and GPPs.
OwnersBox Top Play
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Steven Adams
Adams is in a fantastic spot tonight, and one of the top options on all sites. He’s been absolutely crushing, topping 40+ fantasy points in each of his last three games. Brandon Clarke has already been ruled out, and we can expect another big workload for Adams. Charlotte ranks bottom-three in defensive efficiency against opposing centers — while they allow the second-most rebounds to opponents as well. Adams went for 19 rebounds in his last game against the Hornets, and I think another big double-double is in play tonight.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
