Welcome to another edition of Ben’s Building Blocks! In this article, I will outline the players I’m looking to build my main lineup around for today’s slate. If you want access to my core plays for every main slate, as well as one of the best discord communities in the industry, click here.
Troy Brown- It appears that the Disney bubble was a worthy investment for Adam Silver and the NBA, and I couldn’t be more excited to get NBA DFS back! How fitting is it that my first building block of the bubble is a Wizards player? If you’ve been under a rock the last few weeks, I’ll fill you in. The Wizards got invited to Orlando, but will be without all of John Wall, Bradley Beal and breakout Davis Bertans. They’re also missing Jordan McRrae who was traded away way back before sports got sidelined. Brown looked really good offensively in the Wizards scrimmages, and someone is going to have to shoulder the offense outside of Rui Hachimura. He’s averaging over 1.2 fantasy points per minute this season with Bertans and Beal out of the lineup. I also don’t see him picking up massive ownership with other quality value available.
Caris LeVert- LeVert will be no secret on Friday afternoon, but at his price I’m finding it hard to avoid him even in a tough defensive matchup with the Orlando Magic. He put up a monster 40% usage rate with Kyrie Irving, Spencer Dinwiddie and Taurean Prince off the floor this season — and that number sat around 33% in the Nets scrimmages. It realistic to expect over 20 shots from LeVert in this game, and he feels at least $1,500 too cheap in terms of salary. There’s always merit to fading an extremely high-owned player in tournaments, but I will be locking in LeVert and moving on.
Jarrett Allen- The other Nets player we are locking in (obviously) is Jarrett Allen with no DeAndre Jordan. The Nets literally fired Kenny Atkinson for his refusal to start Jordan over Allen, but now that Jordan isn’t with the team they will need Allen to log all the minutes he can handle. We expect Rodions Kurucs to pick up some backup five minutes, but he is an outside shooter nursing a hip injury, not someone that can really bang down low. Allen has been over a full fantasy point per minutes this year, and averaged over 30 minutes per game in the contests Jordan missed earlier on. Like LeVert, he is just too cheap for what he should need to do even in a tougher matchup.
Lonnie Walker- It’s never fun to trust Greg Popovich, but I’ll likely be doing that on Friday with Lonnie Walker at only $3,200 on DraftKings. It’s a legitimate fact that this Friday will be the biggest edge there’s been in NBA DFS in recent years. Rotations are far from certain for some of these teams. One of the most interesting things from the scrimmages for me was the Spurs going full-on youth movement. It seems like, with no LaMarcus Aldridge, they aren’t worried about trying to slide up to the eighth seed in the Western Conference. They focused heavily on the younger players in those scrimmages, which resulted in Lonnie Walker starting every one of them. He looked really good averaging 13 points per game and shooting over 50% from the field and from deep. I don’t anticipate Walker coming in with high ownership, and I will be taking a stand and looking to be overweight to the field on him, even if it’s a risky proposition.
With the amount of value I have written up, you can add in pretty much any studs you want to the core of your roster. I will personally be overweight on both of James Harden and Luka Doncic, but another player I like is Damian Lillard at his price on DK.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
