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

Keldon Johnson + Tre Jones

San Antonio is once again super banged up — and will be missing all of Jakob Poeltl, Jeremy Sochan, Keita Bates-Diop and Devin Vassell tonight. This is going to make them one of the top targets on the slate, especially with there being just six teams in action tonight. These two players are going to do it all for them offensively tonight, and we can see that based off their fantasy point per minute numbers with Vassell/Poeltl off the court this season. Both see nice increases in their production, and Jones himself gets all the way up to 1.3 — a big boost when we factor iun he’s just south of a full point per minute with them on the floor. Houston is a bottom-three defensive team this season, and I won’t be overthinking this on a three game slate. Pop can always burn you, but I’m plugging in the two best players on the Spurs and moving on tonight.

Tyler Herro

Herro has been one of my favorite targets when healthy this season, and he’s been absolutely locked in since returning from injury. He’s posted 40+ fantasy points in each of his last five games, and his average is approaching 50 points per game if you isolate the last few games. Kyle Lowry being out for Miami tonight is a boost for Herro — but he could get an even bigger bump if Jimmy Butler is ruled out. I like him regardless of Butler’s status – but if Butler is in it’s very likely we get him at pretty low-ownership which I like more so for tournaments than cash game builds.

Value Plays

Tari Eason

If we are going to fit in all three guys listed above, we need some value and I’m looking at the Houston Rockets for that tonight. Jabari Smith is projected to be one of the higher-owned value plays on tonight’s slate, but I actually prefer taking a chance on Eason for even less money. Eason comes in around $1,000 less in salary, and has been the better player in my opinion. He’s been better per minute wise for fantasy as well, but those minutes are the obvious concern. We’ve seen his minutes rise in each of their last game, averaging 25 per game over those two contests — up from his season average of 18. I think he’s legitimately a good player, and if he sees mid-20’s in minutes tonight he could crush his price tag. We have to get weird somewhere on a three game slate and I think I’ll take a stand with Eason on Thursday.

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Jalen Green

Green is right there with Herro as one of the best mid-tier plays on the slate. The good news with Green is that he rates out as a strong value in our projections even with Kevin Porter Jr in — if you take him out (he is currently questionable) he would be come one of the top plays on the slate. It’s clear that we will be plugging in several Spurs players tonight, so getting some correlation on the other side with the likes of Green (and Eason) makes sense in all formats. This game features the highest O/U on tonight’s slate at 230 points. Green has been churning out strong fantasy games all season and continues to lead the Rockets in usage-rate with a 28% mark. Regardless of Porter’s status, I will be overweight on Green tonight.

Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)