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

Jordan Poole

I think Poole could absolutely erupt on Monday night against the Washington Wizards — but it’s worth noting that he’s priced at $9,000 on FanDuel, but just $7,800 on DraftKings. He’s still in play for me on FD, but that price-tag on DK is too hard to ignore and I think he will likely end up as one of the higher-owned guard plays tonight. Poole has been crushing once again without Steph Curry, posting a team-high 35% usage-rate since he went down with an injury. Washington has been one of our main teams to target with ball-dominant Guards and that won’t stop tonight. Their offense has been better at home than on the road this season, and he’s taken on more of a facilitator role than we’ve seen in the past which helps his ceiling. He’s topped 46 DK points in each of his last three, including 50+ in his last two…this is an elite match-up and I want exposure to Poole on my main team.

This seems to be a common theme as we approach the ASB, but we once again have an overload of value on tonight’s slate. This is going to force stars and scrubs builds upon us once again, and most teams will look similarly in cash games. It looks like Joel Embiid and Jimmy Butler are the leading candidates for high-OWN%. I’ll dive into Miami below, but Butler averages almost 1.5 fantasy points per minute with Oladipo/Lowry/Herro off the floor.

Value Plays

Gabe Vincent + Max Strus

Miami is already down Kyle Lowry and Victor Oladipo, and now Tyler Herro is out as well. This gives us a ton of value in the back-court — and both of these guys should be highly-owned in all formats. Strus will step in and start, while Vincent will handle a ton of the ball-handling duties. Strus is a bit cheaper so we will likely see him higher-owned, but I prefer Vincent if only choosing one guy. He gets a 3% usage rate increase with those three players off the floor — overall I think most people will be plugging in both of them together and moving on.

Mark Williams

This is just dumb. Mark Williams has taken over as the Hornets starting C in place of the traded Mason Plumlee — yet is still priced at $4,000 despite 32 and 19 fantasy point games over his last two. That 19 was a tough game against Nikola Jokic, and it’s clear he just shouldn’t be this cheap. He’s going to be well over 40% ownership again tonight and is a tough fade in all formats.

 

Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)