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
Zion Williamson
Before I hop into the plays I want to make sure I note that we have a nice Black Friday sale going on this week! You can get 25% off any package on the website, including MVP which grants you access to all core plays — including NBA, NFL, World Cup and more! With that being said, let’s talk about the optimal plays for tonight’s main slate. New Orleans is already without Brandon Ingram and CJ McCollum, while Larry Nance and Zeke Nnaji are both questionable. The absences of Ingram/McCollum clear the path for an incoming Zion eruption, especially in this match-up with the Oklahoma City Thunder. We have a decent sample-size of Zion without those two on the floor this season, resulting in a near 35% usage rate — up from his season average of 27%. He also sees a huge bump in his assist-rate and potential assists with them off the floor, showing that he will indeed do it all for this team. Overall, it’s a strong match-up and he’s priced as if these guys are playing. He will be highly-owned, but he’s the best play on tonight’s slate in my opinion.
Bruce Brown
Outside of Zion, there are some strong guard plays in the mid-tier but few stick out more so than Bruce Brown. Brown had been right around a point per minute player for the Nuggets this season, and we have him projected for north of 31 minutes tonight. He’s been averaging over 38 DK points per game over the last few games with Michael Porter Jr out — and it sounds like Bones Hyland will miss tonight’s game as well. Hyland has been churning out around a 30% usage rate with no MPJ, so his absence positively impacts Brown as well. I think he is too cheap even if Hyland is playing, and he’s one of the top-overall plays when factoring in price on Monday night.
Value Plays
Jose Alvarado
There’s some really quality value on this slate, starting with Alvarado who gets a boost with those missing Pelicans players. Alvarado is better than people think in my opinion, and he’s been close to point per minute this season when on the floor. He should start again for McCollum, and we have him projected for 30 minutes of action tonight. He had a down game over the weekend, but I’m expecting a bounce-back tonight and I’m good with him in all formats even at high-ownership.
Jaylen Nowell
Nowell isn’t going to start tonight, but Minnesota has lost some key rotation pieces due to injury and that resulted in 20 minutes from Nowell in their last game. He’s priced at just $3,100 on DraftKings and is actually catching a 23 minute projection in our Projections Portal. He is very reliant on scoring, but at this price tag it doesn’t matter much what he does and I think he’s a strong cash game punt on Monday.
OwnersBox Play
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Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
I’m not sure if I’ll be able to fit in SGA on other sites, so getting some exposure to him on OwnersBox is key. New Orleans has been good defensively this season, but that also accounts for the guys being on the court that are out tonight. He’s been one of the best fantasy players this season, posting over a 32% usage rate and nearly 1.4 fantasy points per minute. We’re going to be playing a lot of New Orleans tonight, and running it back with SGA only makes sense.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
