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

Terry Rozier

Rozier recently returned from his ankle injury, and topped 35+ minutes in his return to the lineup so we should have no concerns about his workload tonight. Rozier has been a fantasy monster when we’ve seen him this year, averaging a 31% usage rate and over 1.35 DraftKings points per minute. This is a strong match-up for him individually, and even more shot attempts will go his way with Gordon Hayward out. Overall, with some of the value opening it will be easy to fit in his mid-$7K price tag and he’s one of the top-overall plays tonight.

Anthony Davis/Russell Westbrook

It’s already been announced that LeBron James will be out tonight for the Lakers, and that vaults both AD and Russ to the top of the slate in both ownership and projection relative to their prices. They both sport over a 26% usage rate with LeBron off the court this season and that comes with really strong per minute numbers as well. Last season, Russ averaged nearly 45 fantasy points per game in games LeBron missed. I kind of hate these slates where we are jamming in all the guys from one team, but when a player with the usage rate of LeBron is out I do think it’s optimal for cash games. You can always fade in tournaments, but they’re both building blocks for me on Monday night.

Value Plays

Kyle Anderson

There’s truly nothing worse than a Kyle Anderson chalk night, but even on a 15 game slate I think he is one of the better cash game values. Rudy Gobert remains out for the Minnesota Timberwolves, and that will allow Anderson to continue to start in his place. He’s only $4,100 on DraftKings, and has pretty much been a fantasy point per minute player with Gobert off the floor this season. He showed over the weekend that his minutes will be secure without Gobert and it will be difficult to find a better per dollar play than him tonight.

Kendrick Nunn

And sticking with Lakers theme, Kendrick Nunn is projected to be the highest-owned player on tonight’s slate via our Projections Portal. It’s a very very small-sample but he actually has the highest usage rate on the Lakers this season with LeBron off the floor — 34% in a 35 minute sample. Even if he doesn’t post a usage rate near that tonight, he will be needed for more offense and is the stone-minimum on DK. He’s an okay play on FanDuel, but I will likely have close to 100% exposure on DK at his price tag.

OwnersBox Play

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Darius Garland

I wrote Garland up the other night and he was then promptly ruled out — but I would love some exposure to him tonight. He’s averaging 40 minutes per game since returning from his eye injury and has been really commanding the offense. He’s among the league leaders in potentials assists per game over those two contests, and that combined with the minutes is leading to a huge ceiling even while playing alongside Donovan Mitchell. Nobody will be touching this game because of the O/U and slow pace, but the Clippers have been really vulnerable to PG’s and I think Garland could post a monster score in a big Cavs win tonight.

Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)