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
Anthony Davis
Davis is my favorite play on tonight’s slate and I think there’s a good opportunity for leverage here. Both he and LeBron James carry under 15% ownership tags into this evening, but all the focus is on James as he chases the all-time scoring record. LeBron owns a slightly higher usage rate than Davis this season, but AD has actually been better from a fantasy point per minute perspective. We have him with a top-three ceiling projection tonight, despite his low ownership number. Oklahoma City has been playing smaller lineups as of late, and I think this is a spot where Davis could really get loose. Furthermore, I think James wants to break the record on Thursday night, so he could look to be more of a facilitator than a scorer tonight which also helps out Davis. He’s viable on all sites for me tonight.
Brandon Ingram
Ingram is popping as one of the highest-owned plays tonight in our Projections Portal and looks to be a staple in cash game builds. He won’t carry any minutes limit tonight and seems underpriced at just $7,100 on DraftKings. He leads the Pelicans in usage rate at 32% this season, and should be priced in the $8,000 range in this match-up in my opinion. He’s averaging over 40 fantasy points per game without Zion Williamson this season, and will be the main building block in my lineup on Monday night.
Value Plays
Brooklyn Nets (Again)
I wrote up Cam Thomas yesterday and he exploded for another 40+ real point game against the Los Angeles Clippers. It’s already been confirmed that the newly acquired Nets players won’t be active tonight — which makes Thomas and Edmond Sumner top plays in all formats once again. It is a back-to-back, but these guys logged 39 and 33 minutes last night and will be needed for major workloads again. Thomas has been dominating the usage for them sans Irving, but Sumner has a solid 23% usage rate as well and both these guys are priced the same as they were last night. They will be very chalky, but I don’t see any reason to avoid them in cash formats.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
