I have seen pieces of NBA games, this season, over here in the UAE, and the whole of the Lakers-Bulls game on Christmas Day.

I have seen all of the scores, however. Some former colleagues and I are in about the third decade of an NBA fantasy league (I have both LeBron and Kobe; feeling good!)  so I’m looking at boxes every day … and have been appalled.

Night after night on the densely crowded schedule, teams are dropping stink bombs on unsuspecting fans and TV viewers.

To wit: The Lakers had a seven-point third quarter, their least productive in the era of the shot clock, and scored 73 points against the champion Dallas Mavericks … and won.

It gets worse.

Mike Davis, my former colleague and commissioner of our league, was watching that game live, in Los Angeles, and sent me this assessment of the “big” game:

“Lakers-Mavs tonight, one of the ugliest NBA games I can remember seeing. Hideous. But not all that unusual in the NBA this season.

“Early in the second half I said to (a co-worker) sitting next to me, ‘This is lookin’ like one of those 74-69 type games we’ve been seeing this year.’

“Final was 73-70. Kobe and Pau combined for 22 points and shot 10-for-33 … and the Lakers WON.

“Excruciating to watch.”

That game was by no means an exception to otherwise good hoops.

Consider these scores. Bulls 77, Raptors 64; Mavericks 99, Kings 60; Mavericks 102, Bucks 76; Hawks 111, Bobcats 81; Bulls 78, Wizards 64; Pacers 99, Bobcats 77; 76ers 97, Raptors 62.

And all those hideous games came in the past 10 days.

The NBA is 23 days into its shortened and condensed schedule, and one might think the bugs left behind by a short preseason and exhibition schedule would be worked out by now.

They have not been.

Twenty-three of the 30 teams are scoring fewer points per game than they did a year ago, with the most dramatic declines being registered by the Raptors (13.1! ppg gone lost), the Knicks (11.9), the Pistons (11.6) and the Wizards (11.1). That’s a drop of more than 10 percent for all those teams.

Three of those four, however, are bad teams, so let’s look at some stronger clubs. The Lakers are down 7.3 ppg, the Mavs are down 7.2, and the Pacers, one of the best teams in the league so far, are down 6.0.

Games seem sloppier than normal, with more one-on-one basketball, and, critically, many teams quitting when they get down big early.

This is about the schedule. Why play your starters 40 minutes in a lost cause, as you might in a normal season, with 82 games spread out over 5.5 months, instead of 66 games crammed into four months?

A batch of teams played five games in six days last week. One, the Bulls, managed to go 5-0 — but they’re the best team in the NBA, so far.

Scads of back-to-back-to-backs are wreaking havoc, with clubs involved in those grinding messes almost sure to lose one of the three big a big number.

It’s bad basketball. And you, the paying customer, could be walking into an abomination of a game at any moment.

I grasp that the teams and players wanted as many games as possible to save as much money as they could from a shortened season. But that money is coming from fans and sponsors who are not getting good value.

Jeff Van Gundy, former coach and now analyst, about 10 days ago said that he didn’t expect the caliber of play in the league to pick up appreciably until the playoffs, when teams are getting some rest between games.

The two big factors at work here?

1. Too many games in too few days (66 per team over a 123-day season), and …

2. No time to practice during the season, after short training camps.

It’s gonna be ugly, kids, as often as not, and the Lakers and Bulls showed it on December 25.

The key for teams is to make the playoffs without running their stars ragged, and then maybe the real class will come out and we will see some good hoops.

We can hope.