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
Lamelo Ball
Charlotte/Detroit features tonight’s highest O/U — and with plenty of value we should have no issues building around Lamelo Ball on Monday evening. We know he’s the best player on this team, and he’s been great for fantasy especially lately averaging over 1.4 DraftKings points per minute. Detroit ranks bottom-three in team defensive rating this season, and will be without 3+ starters tonight. Ball has the highest ceiling projection in our Projections Portal — and I see no reason to fade him in cash games and single entry contests on a four game slate.
Brandon Ingram
Ingram is actually projected to be pretty low-owned relative to the size of the slate, which I love tonight against the Orlando Magic. He continues to lead the team in usage rate without Zion Williamson (31%) and has been doing whatever he wants offensively. He averages almost 22 field goal attempts per game over the last five games, which is tied for 8th best in all of basketball. Orlando has struggled to defend wing scorers at times this season, and if he’s going to be taking 20+ shots I think it’s likely he’s one of the best point per dollar options on Monday’s slate.
Value Plays
Detroit Pistons
Given the small size of this slate, everyone will be plugging in 3+ Pistons players tonight with them busting out the tanking technique. They’re going to be down 3-4 starters tonight — and all of Alec Burks, James Wiseman and Hami Diallo have projected ownership numbers over 25%. We also will likely get Marvin Bagley pretty chalky. especially if Isaiah Stewart gets ruled out as well. Killian Hayes is projected to be around 40% also, with Jaden Ivey out. Overall, it’s pretty clear that only plugging in one or two Pistons will differentiate you tonight — or looking to spend up at center. In cash games, you probably just have to play them on this small of a slate — but it makes for an interesting GPP slate despite the low amount of total games.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
