Be careful if you’re paying to see NBA stars

GIVEN that the NBA sells its stars, not its teams, two of its biggest stars — LeBron James and Kyrie Irving — were left home to rest Wednesday rather than travel with the Cavaliers for their only game this season in Memphis.

With a rare sellout in Memphis, this was a baitand-switch of a very expensive kind. But so what? There’s always next time!

And next time came the next night as Thursday’s NBC/NFLN Rams-Seahawks was what it was bound to be on a December weeknight — another stinker between beat-up teams that best served as a fashion show for the NFL’s winter line of uniforms — just in time for Christmas.

Among the steady laments I receive come from NFL patrons desperate to dump their PSLs, even at a big loss, before they bleed any more dough, before they don’t have a pot to PSL in.

But how can this be? Surely, Roger Goodell would be happy to give even money for them. After all, when PSLs started here he declared them to be “good investments.” Here’s one, now: He bought two Jets PSLs for $60,000, plus $750 per tickets per game. Yikes. After too much bad football — often starting and ending at unconventional and inconvenient times — and more “free” chow-line food than he could ingest, “I called the Jets and said, ‘I’m done.’ ”

Wary of legal retaliation for the balance he owed, they settled on the patron being moved to a lesser section — $150 per ticket per game — applying the $20,000 he already had paid to his new PSL bill.

But this season? Forget it. He recently put those two PSLs up for sale through various outlets, the highest offer to date? $300.

So this NFL fan made the absolute worst investment he ever has made and likely ever will make, yet the Commissioner of the NFL publicly pitched it as “a good investment.”