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

Trae Young

It’s a bit of a smaller slate on Monday — only seven games as opposed to the usual 10+ — but Trae Young is once again checking in as the top overall options. We do need to confirm that he’s playing tonight after playing heavy minutes on Sunday, but he is in and good to go I will find it hard to avoid him in all formats. Dejounte Murray and John Collins are both still out for the Hawks, resulting in increased usage/shot attempts for Ice Trae. His usage rate already sits at a huge 33% this season, but we’ve seen that number spike to over 40% with both Collins and Murray off the floor. He hasn’t been shooting the ball great, but you can kind of expect that turn around at some point and the ceiling is truly insane. He trails only Luka Doncic in raw points projections tonight, despite being over $2,000 less in salary. As long as he’s confirmed in, he will anchor my main team on Monday.

Deni Avdija

Avdija is one of the most underrated players in basketball in my opinion, and I’m going to continue to roster him in all formats while Brad Beal is out. He’s averaged over 27 fantasy points per game sans Beal, and more importantly has seen a major increase in his minutes. He’s topped 39+ minutes in each of his last three games and now draws a very fantasy-friendly match-up with the Brooklyn Nets. This game features one of the higher O/U’s on the night at 227.5 and I do think that Washington can keep it competitive. Overall, I think Avdija is viable in all formats and a particularly strong play on FanDuel at his price tag.

Value Plays

Trent Forrest

Forrest and the Hawks will be a main source of salary relief in all contest types tonight, especially if we see a few extra players out due to the back-to-back. Forrest ended up starting for the Hawks last night, while he didn’t end up having a big fantasy night he did find his way into 38 minutes of on court time. We’ve actually seen Atlanta use him as a big body defender on opposing point guards, which means he will likely be defending Ja Morant tonight. This should lead him to upper-30’s in minutes again and make him one of the top value plays on the slate. I would like confirmation that he is starting before firing him up, but as long as he’s in the lineup he is tough to avoid in cash games. Our projections have him at around 30 minutes tonight — with upside for even more.

OwnersBox Top Play

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Rudy Gobert 

I think Gobert is a very good play tonight and someone I’m looking to get exposure to in tournaments. This isn’t typically the type of player I target in DFS, but things have opened up for him more with Karl-Anthony Towns out for the Timberwolves. He actually doesn’t get a huge point per minute bump with Towns off the court — but still checks in with the top per minute rate on the team excluding him. He also sees way more shot attempts, which is a key factor in him hitting his ceiling. Nurkic isn’t that great of a defender, and we’ve seen Rudy have success in this exact match-up before. I’m not sure if he will crack my player pool on all sites, but he’s one of the stronger mid-tier plays on Monday.

Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)