NBA/NHL: Are we looking at an elaborate situation here???

It was bad enough to see it done one time.

Now we may be seeing it three.

After Major League Baseball openly rigged Houston a championship after the hurricanes, it was disgusting enough (especially for those of us here in Los Angeles) to see how much it was clear the entire administration of the game was shitting all over the Dodgers.

Well, lookie what we have here in the winter sports:

• NBA:  A little less obvious than the other one, as Houston has been one of the better second-tier teams for a little while now.   But Houston is 35-13, and, more importantly, has two wins in three games over the Warriors.  (The season opener on the road at Golden State October 17th, and a win at home January 20th.  The Warriors beat the Rockets on January 4th.)  The two teams do not play again in the regular season.
• But the real one is in the NHL, as this Las Vegas Golden Knights situation is not going away anytime soon.  Coming out of this weekend's All-Star break, through 48 games of the 80ish game schedule, the Golden Knights are 32-12 with 4 overtime losses for 68 points.  They lead their division by 9 points over San Jose, and the conference by two over Winnipeg.  (The only team with more points right now is Tampa Bay.)  They have only five losses at home this year in 24 games, two of them in overtime.

To show how ridiculous this Las Vegas situation is, my anonymous friend did some research after I pointed out this post and found the following records for NBA expansion teams:

Dallas, 1980: 15-67, missed the playoffs
Miami, 1988: 15-67, missed the playoffs
Charlotte, same year: 20-62, missed playoffs
Minnesota, 1989: 22-60, missed the playoffs
Orlando, same year: 18-64, missed the playoffs
Toronto, 1995: 21-61, missed the playoffs
Vancouver, same year: 15-67, missed the playoffs

Thankfully, we know that the NBA and NHL playoffs are marathons which make the NHL the greatest playoffs in American sport. 

That said, though:  Are we about to have TWO MORE cases of national tragedy lead to sporting glory?

And then, at what point does some sports-drunk idiot get stupid and do something just to get a championship...