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

Jayson Tatum

We have another slate with loads of value due to the trade deadline, which allows us to spend up on whoever we want in our DFS contests. Usually people focus on Giannis when talking about the top spend-up, and he will definitely see significant ownership on Friday with no Khris Middleton in the lineup. That being said, Boston is still without Jaylen Brown and I think this is an amazing spot for Jayson Tatum. Charlotte plays very fast, and aren’t a good defensive team. To make matters worse, they’re down their best rim protector tonight in Mason Plumlee, as well as Jalen McDaniels. These are two of their best defenders so I expect them to be even worse in that department on Friday night. He’s been making a strong case for MVP consideration and will do even more offensively sans Brown. I don’t think Charlotte has anyone with a prayer of staying in front of him as long as he’s active, and he’s my top-ranked play in all formats.

With all this value, stars and scrubs will be the popular cash game / single-entry build. Paul George, Giannis and Damian Lillard are all popping for heavy projected ownership tags in our Projections Portal. I’m not sure if we will be able to pair Tatum with Giannis but I will certainly be trying for my main team.

Value Plays

Zach Collins + Mark Williams

Double-center will be the move for me on DK tonight with both Collins and Mark Williams in line for huge workloads. Collins has already shown big minutes upside this season, and now Jakob Poeltl is out of town. We have him projected for almost 30 minutes tonight and with a point per minute rate of over 1.00, that makes him the top value on both sites. Williams has a tougher match-up, but he’s actually been even better than Collins with a 1.2 DK point per minute mark this season. He gets a boost with no Plumlee, and should be locked into mid-20’s minutes on Friday night.

Collin Sexton

Sexton is another strong value, who we have projected for north of 25% ownership on DraftKings. He’s coming off one of his bigger games for the Jazz, and will get a boost with no Mike Conley. Russell Westbrook won’t be suiting up tonight, so Sexton will most likely draw another start. In addition to Conley being traded, Jordan Clarkson is questionable to play so Sexton could get an even further boost post-lock once that news breaks. He isn’t a must in GPPs, but he will be locked into most cash game builds on this slate.

 

Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)