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

Kevin Durant

This is a classic NBA slate with tons of Q tags and guys already getting ruled out across the board. One thing we know for sure is, Kyrie Irving and Ben Simmons will both be out for the Nets clearing the path for a Kevin Durant takeover. He’s already been one of the best players in fantasy basketball this season, but we could see a nuclear run for KD here. Last season he averaged over 50 DK points per game with Irving off the floor (after they traded Harden) and he’s simply going to have to take over tonight. We have plenty of value opening up, and he’s my favorite spend-up on all sites tonight.

Jordan Poole

Poole party will be in full effect on Friday night, with all of Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Andrew Wiggins and Draymond Green out for the Warriors. Poole owns monster splits with those guys off the floor, including a fantasy point per minute bump to over 1.2 points. More importantly, he will be able to take as many shots and basically do whatever he wants on offense. He’s projecting for over 65% ownership in our Projections Portal, making him pretty much a must play in cash games / single entry contests. You can always fade in GPPs, but he’s clearly one of the best overall plays on the slate.

Value Plays

Warriors Value

Well, this entire slate took a crazy turn on Friday afternoon when the Warriors seemingly ruled out their entire roster like it’s a late-March game! This will push a ton of focus onto the aforementioned Poole, as well as Jonathan Kuminga and Moses Moody. Both Kuminga and Moody are in line for likely 30+ minutes and both priced below $4,000 on DK. Kuminga has looked better for fantasy purposes — and has a better per minute production rate so I would side with him if only choosing one of these guys. That being said, this will clearly be a stars and scrubs slate with the Warriors being the top source for value on all sites.

De’Anthony Melton

Tyrese Maxey and De’Anthony Melton both received positive fantasy boosts on Thursday when it was announced that James Harden would be sidelined for at least a month. Melton is way too cheap for the 32 minutes we have him projected for — especially when he’s been as good as he has been from three. He’s been one of the best three point shooters in basketball this season, and will see more shot attempts with Harden sidelined. He isn’t quite as cheap as the Warriors guys, but he can be paired with Maxey in all formats tonight.

OwnersBox Play

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Darius Garland

There are several stars in good spots on Friday night, but I wouldn’t mind getting some exposure to DG against the Pistons. People were skeptical on him and Mitchell being able to play together, while we’ve only seen it for two games it worked very well against the Celtics on Wednesday night. Garland was the one bringing the ball up mostly and per NBA Stats he led the league in potential assists on Wednesday night. If the Cavs shots are falling we could be looking at a double-double here and I like the ceiling for Garland in this offense.

Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)