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
Bam Adebayo
Adebayo checks in as one of the top-overall plays on tonight’s slate due to his $6,400 price tag on DraftKings. Adebayo is grading out with the second-highest Karma Value rating in our Projections Portal against the Chicago Bulls. Chicago was pretty bad against big men over the last month of the 2021 season, and I’m not scared off of Nikola Vucevic as a defender. Bam was rocking a near 30% usage rate during this preseason, and while that number will certainly come down during the regular season it’s pretty clear he’s going to be more active offensively. He was near 1.5 DK points per minute last season and I think that number rises a bit in 2022. Overall, this is far too cheap and I’m taking advantage of the misprice.
Terry Rozier
Rozier will be no secret tonight with Lamelo Ball, but he has to be included as a building block. We have him projected as the seventh-best value on this slate, as well as the highest-owned player. He’s going to dominate the ball on offense with no Melo, and the Spurs are set to be one of the worst defensive units in the league as they set out on a quest to acquire the number one pick. Not only is this Spurs team terrible defensively, they were top-ten in pace last season. Rozier averaged over a 25% usage rate with Ball off the floor in 2021 and I think he is well worth his chalk status on Wednesday night. He’s viable in all formats.
Value Plays
Devin Vassell
Several Spurs players will be chalky tonight on DraftKings due to some of the worst pricing I’ve ever seen. Keldon Johnson and Devin Vassell are likely going to dominate the ball — while Jakob Poeltl and Tre Jones have been serviceable starters before and all four of these guys are underpriced severely. It never feels good trusting Gregg Popovich, but I will have plenty of Spurs exposure tonight and Vassell is so cheap. He was at well over a 25% usage rate during the preseason, and will be one of the higher-owned players tonight based on early OWN% projections.
John Konchar
I feel like John Konchar has been a mid to late season NBA DFS legend the last few years, but we get to comfortably fire him up in all formats on opening night. Memphis is pretty thin despite it being night one, with Dillon Brooks, Jaren Jackson and Ziaire Williams all out. He was just south of a 0.95 DK point per minute, but he’s priced at the stone minimum and will likely start and log 30+ minutes. We aren’t starved for value, but if he is confirmed starting he is a great source of salary relief.
OwnersBox Play
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Ja Morant
This is an amazing spot for Morant against the Knicks, who have nobody capable of guarding him tonight. This game should be pretty competitive which could lead to massive minutes for Morant — seeing as Memphis is already super thin. They’re going to lean on him all season, but he was fantastic in the preseason and could really pop-off here on night one.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
