Odd, how it works. In Lester Holt, NBC found the credible lead news anchor to replace discredited Brian Williams.

Then NBC assigned Holt to destroy his credibility by serving as NBC’s lead Olympic shill.

Since the Olympics began, NBC News, fronted by Holt, has, unsurprisingly, been little more or better than an Olympic preview and recap show. Legitimate news that doesn’t directly serve to sell NBC’s Olympics coverage — as briefly seen between commercials — have been minimized or eliminated.

On Thursday’s NBC News, Holt conducted an exclusive interview with NBC’s Al Michaels. They reiterated the self-evident story that NBC already had made abundantly and repetitively clear: U.S. women are winning lots of medals.

That would be the same theme of the show that followed on NBC, “Access Hollywood.” Thursday, it was difficult to distinguish “NBC Nightly News” with Lester Holt from “Access Hollywood.”

Monday, an NBC News report on the devastating floods in Louisiana was preceded by an interview with Michael Phelps. Priorities.

One would think given the Williams fiasco — his self-promotional tale of his helicopter being fired on while covering the war in Iraq was proven a lie — NBC would be extra protective of its new top journalist’s credibility and integrity.

One would think the last thing NBC would want to do to NBC News and to Holt was to send him to Rio to be NBC’s lead Olympic shill — especially during a presidential campaign in which both candidates are painfully short on credibility.

But that’s not how it works in modern broadcast “journalism.” News anchors are to serve the best financial interests of the corporate Fatherland — to hell with credibility, to hell with legitimate journalism.

Long before Williams was revealed to have credibility issues, NBC was whittling his away by having him increasingly shill for NBC shows and properties during newscasts.

In 2010, Williams reported on a major U.S. military operation against the Taliban — while he stood outdoors wearing an NBC Olympics ski jacket in Vancouver, B.C., site of NBC’s Winter Games coverage.

For two weeks in 2002, Tom Brokaw anchored NBC News standing on a snow-covered hill in Utah, wearing his NBC Olympics snowsuit.

They looked ridiculous and, despite the layers of clothing, also were seen as transparent shills.

Brokaw was forced to sell his soul to NBC’s Olympic Movement well before that. In 1996, he was dispatched to anchor NBC News from Atlanta, as per NBC’s Atlanta Games.

In fact, Brokaw began selling NBC’s Atlanta Olympics days before the Games began, thus he was in Atlanta when TWA Flight 800, JFK-to-Paris, exploded, killing all 230 passengers.

Still, in service to the NBC Fatherland, Brokaw, from Atlanta, tried to connect that disaster with those Olympics:

“The explosion of Flight 800 was a tragic and unexpected prelude to the Games. So tonight the Opening Ceremonies take on a richer meaning of healing and celebration to temper the anxiety and despair.”

It was nauseating, as ugly a reach as a news anchor/network shill could make on the air. According to Brokaw, that disaster — those 230 dead — gave those Olympics added significance, made it even more important to watch the Games on NBC.

But since buying the Olympics, starting with the 1992 Games in Barcelona, NBC has trained its most prominent on-air staffers to roll over, sit up and beg.

It still seems impossible that when interviewing the dealer-with-devils IOC dictator and unrepentant World War II Fascist Juan Antonio Samaranch, Dick Enberg, on NBC, addressed him as “Your Excellency.”

Soon, Holt will be back in New York, anchoring NBC News. He will resume reporting on those who don’t know right from wrong, and worse, those who do know, but choose — or are ordered — to do wrong.

Pick your poison: WFAN in the morning or afternoon

What’s your preference for being treated like a moron: WFAN’s morning drive-time show or its afternoon drive-time show?

Thursday morning Craig Carton excitedly hollered that he and his inside sources in Rio had nailed this Ryan Lochte and Crew story right on its head — how two female swimmers were sent to pick them up at 5 a.m. and how, Carton repeated, “There was no gas station!”

Carton’s scoop later that day was revealed to be nonsense, and the smoking starter’s pistol was the gas station video.

Friday, sidekick Boomer Esiason tried to make fools of listeners by praising Carton’s investigative work — his pile of inside misinformation — with, “Craig added clarity to the Ryan Lochte story yesterday.” Maybe, instead of “clarity,” he meant to say “hilarity” or “Clarabelle” (Honk! Honk!).

Or do you prefer WFAN’s evening drive? There’s wrong, then there’s “Mike Francesa Wrong” — the ability to be colossally wrong about everything while remaining fully convinced you know everything about everything.

Let’s not forget that in late March Francesa touted the Mets’ over-88 wins as an easy money bet. He is gifted, that way.

Meanwhile, Daniel Murphy, who Francesa at least twice insisted never would hit major league pitching, continues to lead the NL in batting.

Jose Altuve, whom early this season Francesa dismissed as nothing special, is leading the AL in batting by 45 points.

Both Murphy and Altuve are at or near the top of many batting/slugging/runs-scored categories, while “nothing special” Altuve also has 26 stolen bases.

Heck, one or both could win their league’s MVP. Dustin Pedroia won the AL MVP — after Francesa dismissed him as “a nothing.”

MLB teams’ music choices smack of hypocrisy

Aroldis Chapman, now with the Cubs after joining the Yankees following a 30-game suspension for domestic violence — during an argument with his girlfriend he fired eight shots into a garage — left the mound last Sunday in Wrigley to the public address sound of the rap song, “Smack My B–ch Up.”

The employee who chose that charming number was fired.

Interesting. MLB’s other Chicago team, the White Sox, early this season was considering signing a renown Chicago rapper, Chance, as the team’s “youth ambassador.”

That many of Chance’s songs — those that launched his popularity — vulgarly degrade women and reference black men as “n—as” must’ve fit the team’s description of a youth ambassador.

CBS is now partnering in come-ons to sign up with FanDuel. Come and get it, young suckers!

If state lotteries have to print the odds of winning on the tickets, why not FanDuel and DraftKings posting updated odds?

That would be bad for business — everyone’s, including the TV networks, team owners and leagues that financed these “games of skill,” investments predicated on young sports fans’ gambling losses.