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
Pascal Siakam
Siakam was featured in this write-up on Monday, and he responded with another 49 DK points performance against the Boston Celtics. He’s been one of the best players in all of fantasy basketball this season, and has now topped 40+ DK points in each of his last five games. He continues to lead the Raptors in both usage rate and point per minute production. We also are going to be plugging in a few Lakers pieces tonight, and getting that correlation with Siakam on the other side makes sense in all formats. Overall, the spread has ballooned to 12.5 points with both LeBron and AD out for LA, but Siakam also recently asked for a heavier minutes workload. He played 38 minutes last time out against Boston, and we have him projected for 35 minutes tonight. There’s definite upside for that number to approach 38-39 minutes if LA can stay competitive and I think Siakam is the best spend-up on Wednesday’s slate.
Jordan Poole
Poole will be an obvious selection tonight, and we currently have him projected for upwards of 60% ownership in our Projections Portal. Golden State has ruled out all of Steph Curry, Draymond Green and Andrew Wiggins tonight paving the way for Poole and Klay Thompson to run the show for the Warriors. Dating back to last season, if we take those three players off the floor Poole owns a monster 31% usage rate. That usage rate is obviously not indicative of his price tag, with salaries getting released before we got that news. He also has a great individual match-up against Utah, with the Jazz ranking bottom-five in team defensive rating. He should play over 30 minutes tonight and dominate the offense, making him a top play in all formats.
Value Plays
Warriors Value
Everyone will be stuffing in multiple Warriors players to go along with Poole and Klay Thompson due to these injuries. More minutes are going to open for guys like Jonathan Kuminga, Anthont Lamb and even Donte DiVincenzo. Lamb is first in line to start, but we could also see Mosey Moody slide into the starting lineup. We will likely need to see the lineup, but it’s clear that three or even four Warriors will be a fine build for cash games tonight. In tournaments, it is tough to avoid the cheap pieces and even Poole/Klay are tough fades in the mid-tier for their expected roles. Plugging in some of the cheap chalk and then getting contrarian with your spend-ups could be a good way to play in small-field tourneys tonight.
Thomas Bryant
Bryant has actually been a point per minute beast for the Lakers recently and I’ve played him a few times. There’s a pretty good chance that he will start for the Lakers tonight, and he’s priced just $100 off the minimum on DraftKings. I would like the news that he is starting officially, but luckily this is an earlier game so we should have that news. Regardless, we have him projected for around 25 minuets tonight making him the top overall value in all formats.
OwnersBox Play
If you’ve never checked out OwnersBox Fantasy — CLICK HERE and use Promo Code KARMA for a 100% deposit match up to $500 along with a free $10 DFS contest entry. The great thing about OwnersBox is the super-flex format and it allows for some really unique builds without having to force certain positions into your lineups.
Kyle Kuzma
As noted above, there’s plenty of value on this big slate and that makes getting up to whoever we want pretty easy. Washington will be without Bradley Beal tonight which should really unlock Kuzma. He averages over 1.1 fantasy points per minute with Beal off the floor this season, along with a 31% usage rate. Kuzma has quietly balled out since leaving the Lakers, and the Chicago Bulls rank near the bottom of the league in terms of defending his position. Our projections love Kuzma tonight, and I think he will end up being one of my highest-owned players.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
