REST THEIR CASE

NBA season must be too long if players too tired to play

IT WAS the perfect night and the perfect place to have tickets to the perfect NBA game.

The start of Thanksgiving week, Monday, Pelicans at home against the star-filled defending NBA champion Warriors. A standing-room-only crowd was in the house — 18,589 in an arena with a listed capacity of 17,900.

And it was an expensive bait-and-switch ripoff — a tank job in the first degree.

Coach Steve Kerr, that champion of social altruism and justice, held four of his starters — Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson and Andrew Wiggins; a total of roughly $137 million this season in salary — out of the game, the entire game.

Apparently in need of a group rest, they didn’t even bother to wear their uniforms.

Game? Did I write “game”? It was a prefabricated farce, a light scrimmage.

The Pelicans won, 128-83, the secondlargest winning margin in team history. Anyone bet the NBA champion Warriors with NBA-partnered Damn Fool FanDuel?

Uninspired to play competitive, highestlevel professional basketball, the teams killed time by attempting 85 3-pointers. Warriors “starter” Jonathan Kuminga made just six of his 20 tries.

Adam Silver, who now seems to be operating on a wish list, has made sure to take care of what makes NBA team owners beg, roll over and play dead: TV money. Teams are not allowed to rest healthy players during games broadcast on national TV.

It was loosely known as the “Kawhi Leonard Rule” — as the Clippers star was regularly given games off to reduce his “workload.”

As for the in-house, out-of-pocket suckers paying up to $3,500 for a courtside seat to Monday’s Warriors-Pelicans, nothing prevented them for enjoying a good view of Curry as he kicked back on the bench. The NBA sells its superstars in any position, including sitting.

As pro sports continue to buckle under the strain of its own excesses — look no further than the vacant empty seats in new Yankee Stadium since it opened in 2009 and the disappearance of some Yankees Friday night games to exclusivity on a streaming enterprise — those excesses remain untreated, neglected.

Look what Roger Goodell’s “good investment” PSLs did for the Giants and Jets. Teams can’t keep their second-string QBs healthy — not to mention the rest of their highly paid players — so let’s add more regular-season games to artificially stimulate their bottom lines.

How many more playoff teams can MLB add before even the dimmest wits know they’re being had?

How much due diligence did Rob Manfred conduct before he made a front-and-center promo deal with collapsed crypto smoke-in-a-pail FTX? How did MLB and Manfred escape the class action suit filed against all those celebrities who were paid to push FTX?

“Obviously, the FTX development was a little jarring,” explained Manfred. “We have been really careful moving forward in this space.” Yeah, obviously. Very careful.

Are 82 regular-season NBA games too many to ensure genuine competition — genuine, all-in basketball quality has become another matter — and too many to allow adequate rest and healing? Obviously, they must be.

But to reduce the number of games is to reduce everyone’s income, owners and players. Taking less for the improvement of the product in both the short and long runs is anathema to the current sports business that emphasizes raw greed.

And so “games” such as that one Monday in New Orleans become, as Tom Jones crooned, “not unusual.”

How many among those 18,589 learned the hard way to never spend another dime on an NBA game? How many pro sports customers have become conditioned by their favorite sports and teams to never return?

How many fresh suckers can be found to replace the former suckers?

On Dec. 13 the NBA champion Warriors will play at the Bucks. On Dec. 14 they will play at the Pacers — their only game in Indianapolis this season. But will there be a game or just another session of three-card monte?