Cavaliers’ sweep is no guarantee of future success against Lakers

LeBron James said it best after the Cleveland Cavaliers completed a season sweep of the Lakers on Thursday night: “You don’t want to look too far into it.” ...

As Dwight Howard and the Orlando Magic showed last season, going 2-0 against the Lakers in the regular season is a far cry from stopping them four times in a playoff series. ...

On the other hand, the Lakers have yet to show the grittiness that brought them a title last spring. ...

Even their gold home uniforms didn’t help in Cleveland. ...

James is a bull in a china shop. ...

If the New York Jets get past Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts, Mark Sanchez would be positioned to do something that no other former USC quarterback has done in 43 years: throw a pass in the Super Bowl. ...

In 1967 at the Coliseum, Kansas City Chiefs backup and ex-Trojan Pete Beathard relieved Len Dawson and completed one of five passes against the Green Bay Packers. ...

New Orleans, which has hosted nine Super Bowls, has never staged an NFC championship game. ...

When a street in West Lafayette, Ind., was named in honor of former Purdue and current New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees years ago, it of course was christened Brees Way. ...

In reaching an agreement with Joel Pineiro, the Angels showed again that they’re usually a step ahead of the Dodgers. ...

Sidney Crosby’s Pittsburgh Penguins usually have the upper hand against Alex Ovechkin’s Washington Capitals, but that obviously wasn’t the case Thursday night. ...

Golfer Pat Perez, suggesting that Tiger Woods might disappear from public life altogether if he weren’t still chasing Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 major championships, told the Associated Press, “Now he’s got to ask himself if the juice is worth the squeeze.” ...

If he’d done that earlier, maybe he wouldn’t be in this mess. ...

The only Dodgers elected to the Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility were Jackie Robinson and Sandy Koufax. ...

Lawyer Drew McElroy, who has filed papers in Knoxville, Tenn., to rename a waste water treatment plant the Lane Kiffin Sewage Center, tells WBIR-TV, “We want to memorialize his stay here, and I think this would be doing it properly.” ...

Get over it already. ...

An AskMen.com list of the top 99 most desirable women includes five from the sports world: ESPN reporter Erin Andrews, mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carano, UFC ring girl Arianny Celeste and tennis players Maria Sharapova and Ana Ivanovic. ...

Topping the list, by the way, is actress Emmanuelle Chriqui, who plays Sloan McQuewick on the HBO series “Entourage,” whose male characters all seem to be Lakers fans. ...

Regarding the ball boy who wet his pants at the Australian Open this week, causing a 40-minute delay in a match, reader Bob Tucker of Solvang wonders, “Did Serena cuss him out?” ...

The inaugural class of inductees to the Black College Football Hall of Fame includes Deacon Jones, who played at South Carolina State and Mississippi Vocational College before launching a Hall of Fame NFL career with the Los Angeles Rams. ...

Jerry Rice, Walter Payton and another former Rams great, the late Paul “Tank” Younger, also were among those honored. ...

Noting that three major-college football coaches have been fired in recent weeks amid reports that they physically abused players, Greg Cote of the Miami Herald offers a simple solution to make it stop: “Players get to hit back.” ...

College football’s only Division I coaches who’ve been in their current jobs for as many as 20 consecutive seasons are Penn State’s Joe Paterno and Virginia Tech’s Frank Beamer. ...

Former New York Times hockey writer Robin Herman, who made history at the 1975 NHL All-Star game by becoming the first female newspaper reporter to enter a male professional sports locker room, is now the assistant dean for communications at the Harvard School of Public Health. ...

Nobody can accuse Tim Lincecum, seeking a raise of nearly $12.5 million, of not aiming high. ...

“If a coach is smart enough to set up a winning game plan,” reader Martin Dietrich of Manhattan Beach wonders, “why isn’t he smart enough to know a Gatorade bath is coming?”

jerome.crowe@latimes.com