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

Ball was ejected from last night’s game, but that won’t stop him from being one of the highest-owned players on tonight’s slate. Ball feels like he’s been underpriced since returning from injury, and he draws a fantastic match-up tonight against the Detroit Pistons. Detroit ranks bottom-three in defensive rating as a team and they’ve been absolutely shredded by ball dominant guards. They struggle defending in the PNR and on drives, and this is a spot where Ball can really get cooking. He leads the team in usage rate and point per minute production — while he’s grading out as one of the best values on the slate in our Projections Portal. He’s too cheap for his floor/ceiling combo and is a top play in all formats.

Domantas Sabonis + Harrison Barnes

Some of the biggest news on the slate is that the Kings will be without De’Aaron Fox tonight against the Indiana Pacers. That lines Sabonis up in an even better spot that usual, especially when we bake in the #revenge factor against his former team (kidding). Sabonis doesn’t get huge rate increases with Fox off the floor but that’s because he already has monster rates across the board. It does raise his ceiling and shot attempt projection — we have him with the fifth-highest ceiling on Friday’s slate. Barnes gets a nice points per game boost — and one of the bigger usage rate spikes (3%) with Fox off the floor. Indiana has struggled to contain wing scoring as of late, and our projections love him tonight. Both can be considered values at their price tags on DK, and I plan to anchor my main team with both of them.

Value Plays

Josh Richardson

San Antonio is extremely thin tonight — and will be missing all of Tre Jones, Devin Vassell, Jeremy Sochan and Romeo Langford. Richardson will likely step into the starting lineup for Jones and run point guard tonight. It’s not a great match-up against the 6ers, but for this price it’s hard to pass him up in cash games. We can also look at Malachi Branham who started the second-half alongside Richardson last game. Both guys played over 16 minutes in that second-half — and both carry minutes projections over 29 minutes tonight. Branham can be aggressive scoring the ball and I think these guys are arguably the top value situation on this slate.

Outside of the Spurs — we still have more value with the Kings in Davion Mitchell and Malik Monk. Both are projecting for over 20% ownership on Friday night. We also haven’t gotten news on Joel Embiid tonight. If he is ruled out — look for James Harden and Montrezl Harrell to be must-plays in all formats on both FanDuel and DraftKings.

Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)