Lakers’ strong play without Kobe Bryant fuels the notion that LeBron James is the NBA’s MVP

The Lakers’ strong play without Kobe Bryant probably only reinforces the notion in many voters’ minds that the NBA’s most valuable player is LeBron James. ...

On a more important note, it bodes well for the Lakers and their hopes of winning another championship. ...

Sign spotted in New Orleans this week: “Lombardi Gras.” . . .

Maybe it wasn’t so surprising that the pivotal play in the Super Bowl was an interception of a Peyton Manning pass: The four-time MVP had 16 passes picked off in 2009, more than any other quarterback ranked among the top 20 in passer rating. . . .

Manning, for all his regular-season success and personal accolades, is 9-9 in playoff games. . . .

Tom Brady is 14-4, Ben Roethlisberger 8-2. . . .

Reggie Bush, USC notes, joins Marcus Allen and Tony Dorsett as the only players who’ve won a Heisman Trophy, a national championship and a Super Bowl. . . .

Next year’s Super Bowl will be played Feb. 6, Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday, perhaps inspiring fans of the old Jim Healy radio program to wonder, “Where’s Ricky Sanders?” . . .

Babe Ruth also was born Feb. 6 -- 115 years ago. . . .

As Sidney Crosby surely will be reminded in the next two weeks, Canada has yet to win a gold medal in an Olympics it was hosting after being shut out in Montreal and Calgary. . . .

Canadian-born figure skater Tanith Belbin of the United States might help set a world record in Vancouver, Esquire suggests, “for the number of men watching ice dancing.” . . .

Bad luck: Only days before Mike Dunleavy’s last season as coach of the Clippers, 2009 No. 1 overall NBA draft pick Blake Griffin suffered a season-ending knee injury. . . .

Worse luck: Only days into Dunleavy’s last season as coach of the Lakers, 1979 No. 1 overall NBA draft pick Magic Johnson announced that he was HIV positive. . . .

If Manny Ramirez is worried about wearing out his legs in the outfield, reader Sterling Buckingham of Canyon Country e-mails to suggest, “it would only be from standing, not running.” . . .

Twenty years ago Wednesday, a 42-to-1 underdog named James “Buster” Douglas flattened Mike Tyson in the 10th round at Tokyo, handing Iron Mike the first loss of his career. . . .

A 2006 Emerald Bowl victory over UCLA was among the 12 football wins vacated by Florida State this week because of an academic cheating scandal, but there’s no reason for Patrick Cowan and the Bruins to celebrate. . . .

Officially, nobody won the 2006 Emerald Bowl. . . .

Before Wednesday night’s game against Duke, Deon Thompson and defending national champion North Carolina stood 10th in the Atlantic Coast Conference. . . .

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, hinting this could be the last Olympics in which NHL players compete, spoke from experience when he recently told reporters, “It’s difficult for any business, any league, to shut down for two weeks with the attendant loss of attention and everything that flows from that.” . . .

Left unsaid by the man who presided over the 2004-05 lockout: Shutting down for an entire season is even worse. . . .

Never has the Pacific 10 Conference men’s basketball regular-season champion failed to make the NCAA tournament, but that might change when the 2010 field is announced next month. . . .

During Jerry West’s Lakers playing career, several readers e-mailed to note, free throws were awarded after every defensive foul, which helps to explain why West shot so many more free throws than Bryant. . . .

The Lakers’ 1972 championship team, for instance, shot 695 more free throws than the Lakers’ 2002 championship team, an average of nearly nine a game. . . .

Ninety years ago this week, baseball banned spitballs and all other pitches thrown with a wet or marked-up ball, a rule famously ignored by Gaylord Perry on his way to the Hall of Fame, as noted in Perry’s autobiography, “Me and the Spitter.” . . .

Here’s a surefire way for NBA players to prevent their nude photos from surfacing on the Internet: Stop posing for them. . . .

Bill Walton, the Homer of hyperbole, recently told Fox Sports, “Being with Chick Hearn was like walking through Yosemite with John Muir, coming down the Grand Canyon with John Wesley Powell, standing at Gettysburg with Abraham Lincoln.” . . .

Or trading guitar licks at Winterland with Jerry Garcia?

jerome.crowe@latimes.com