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

Bones Hyland

There’s some really strong mid-tier plays tonight, starting with Bones Hyland. Given how strong some of these mid-tier guys are, I’m going to focus on them in this article and plugging them in will allow you to spend-up for whichever stud you think is suitable. Hyland owns a 30% usage rate this season, along with 1.2 DraftKings points per minute. Those are very solid rates, and then we can bake in that both Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray will both be out for the Nuggets tonight, in addition to Ish Smith. Michael Porter has really been struggling the last few games, and Hyland has the best individual match-up of any Nuggets player tonight. He should see minutes regardless of the score — and our Projections Portal has him at 30 minutes tonight. He’s one of the top plays on the slate in all formats.

Max Strus

Another big spot for injuries tonight is the Miami Heat. Tyler Herro, Bam Adebayo and Jimmy Butler are all out, while Caleb Martin is questionable. In addition to that, we also got news that Duncan Robinson will miss tonight’s game. All of the guards get big bumps here, and Strus has been in good form putting up 28+ fantasy points in each of his last three games. This sets up very well for DFS purposes as the Heat’s defensive rating plummets with Adebayo off the floor. They drop from a top-ten defense to a bottom-ten unit without him, and it makes the entire game more attractive on both sides. Strus is inside out top-five overall tonight in projected OWN%, and can be used in all formats.

Value Plays

Gabe Vincent

Vincent should be one of the main beneficiaries of the Heat injuries, with a lofty 35 minute projection in our Projections Portal. He’s not a huge per minute producer, but should be on the floor a ton tonight and can always pick up some of the extra shot attempts. I don’t think he’s a must play in tournaments, but should be featured in most cash game builds. As of now, he’s our highest projected owned player on Friday night.

OwnersBox Play

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Jaden Ivey

Ivey has been dominating for the Pistons without Cade Cunningham, who remains out tonight. He has been unable to really get his shot going, but his usage rate is way up and when we get him on a night that his shot is falling he’s going to smash his price tag. Since Cunningham went down, he’s sporting a usage rate north of 30% which doesn’t really reflect in his price tag. I’ll continue to play him while Cunningham is out and hopefully he comes in under-owned due to the size of Friday night’s slate.

Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)