Schedule, Schedule, Schedule
Basketball is different from football and baseball in that each team's schedule can vary greatly from week to week. Football, aside from bye weeks, is played every week. Baseball is played almost every day. With basketball, one team can play 4-5 times in a week while another team might only play only 2 times. One other slight difference between basketball and other sports is that player performance tends to be more consistent. Yes, players have bad games, and players do get hot, but if a player averages 40 SCS points a game during the entire regular season, then they usually will average 'around' 40 SCS points a game for a several game stretch.
When to focus on schedule
It's important to have as much of your SCS Franchise Value as you can tied up in players who have excellent schedules. If your current Franchise Value is such that you can own four top tier players, then those are the ones you should focus the most attention on, making sure they have a good schedule. As an illustration, let's say top tier players average 50 points per game and each of your top tier players have 4 games in the next 7 days, then obviously you're looking at 200 points per player over the 7 days or 800 points total from that group. If you were to ignore their schedule and you had two top tier players with 4 games in 7 days and two other top tier players with only 2 games in the 7 day stretch, then your team would only score 600 points from that whole group. If you repeatedly ignore the schedule over the entire NBA season then you will find your name drifting down the leaderboard.
Seasoned managers who have played this type of game format before will also know this strategy. Having the majority of participants of Salary Cap Sports basketball following the same strategy means that player prices are also going to rise and fall according to a player's schedule strength. With Salary Cap Sports you can make trades daily, there really aren't weekly hold periods, per se. You need to focus on schedules all the time, and buy when a player's schedule starts to get good. Buying and selling are not just weekly decisions.
When not to focus on schedule
Lower priced players that you're buying just to see price increases may give you the opportunity to buy when the schedule is not quite as good. If there is a really cheap player who is suddenly in the starting lineup and averaging 40 points per game, but their schedule doesn't get good until four days from now, it may still be a good time to buy. When buying lower priced players who are over-performing, you usually are doing this for price gains. When there's a player like this who has a thin schedule, often what happens is their price starts to go up, in anticipation of their price going up! You wouldn't want to buy Nicola Jokic with his hefty price tag if he isn't playing for the next three days, but if you are focused on price and not points then you could buy a cheap player. It's not crazy for a player who's very inexpensive to have maximum price increases for 2 or 3 days in a row before their schedule even improves. Another benefit to jumping on the hot new player before their schedule improves is that if they are going to flame out then you are buying before they can play a game and stink. You will have made your money long before everyone is trying to sell.
What to do in the preseason
Schedule is also important in the preseason. If you buy a top tier player with four games in the first 11 days then they obviously are not going to score as well as a player with 6 games in the first 11. Of course, performance of each player also plays a part in player's scoring, but as mentioned previously, in basketball performance is usually pretty consistent over several games.
One thing to keep in mind in the preseason is that in basketball there will most certainly be early season surprises. If you can determine which surprise players are going to continue their production then you will want to own them.
In summary, do pay attention to the schedule in the preseason and create a plan around this, but don't get married to your plan!