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

Jevon Carter + Bobby Portis

Milwaukee just keeps winning despite missing all of their star players, and it’s insane how good this team is when you think about it. They’re once again going to be playing tonight without their big-three, and both Carter and Portis are hard to avoid at their price tags. Some may see $5K for Carter and be scared, but this guy just went out there last game and calmly dropped in over 30 real points and 12 dimes. His potential assist number was over 20, and he had the ball in his hands a ton. I don’t want to take too much from one game, but if that role is even 75% of what it was last game he should be close to $7,000 in salary. Portis is over 1.1 fantasy points per minute this season with Giannis/Middleton off the floor and he has a really strong individual match-up tonight. Both are locks for me in all formats and I think playing three to four Bucks guys in cash games is 100% fine.

Russell Westbrook

Russ is popping as pretty much our best value on the slate at his current price per our Projections Portal — and that’s with Anthony Davis projected in. Los Angeles is already down LeBron James, and now Anthony Davis has been bumped down to questionable as well due to an illness. Russ has been much better (for fantasy) as of late, and is going to be able to take as many shots / have the ball in his hands as much as he wants tonight. He’s been a model of consistency for DFS over the last week or so, and would clearly lead the team in per minute ability if Davis gets ruled out. Even if Davis is in, I find it tough to avoid him in all formats but he will be a building block for my cash game builds in this spot.

Value Plays

Malik Monk

This is a weird NBA slate, in that it doesn’t currently feature much value. Monk doesn’t get any injury bumps for anything, but has been posting almost 30 DK points per game over his last four games for the Sacramento Kings. Lakers/Kings features the second-highest O/U on the slate at 232 and with pretty much 0 key injuries after pricing was released — barring maybe Anthony Davis — Monk’s sub-$5K price on DK is pushing ownership onto him. We currently have him projected for over 20% ownership per our projections portal. I don’t think he’s a must-play in GPPs at all, but as it currently stands he’s a fine cash game option unless we get some more stuff that opens up.

OwnersBox Play

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Darius Garland

I continue to write up Garland for OwnersBox, because I love the role he’s in and this game actually might be one of the best on the slate. DG is coming off a dreadful game, but it was confirmed afterword that he was ill and not playing at 100%. That should be behind him now, and the Cavs match up with the Warriors in a game with a really solid 232 O/U separated by just 2.5 points. I think this game will be close, and one thing that the Cavs do in close games is playing their starters massive minutes. I think Garland could see close to 40 minutes tonight, and I expect him to be back to 100% following that dud last game. I 100% will be looking for multiple pieces from his game in tournaments.

Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)