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"The championship still runs through LA."

LeBron James said it best.

Those two wins over the Lakers this season look fabulous on the ledger, but they don't guarantee the Cavaliers anything in the future against Kobe Bryant and his mates.

I don't want to minimize the significance of Thursday night's win or the Christmas Day beatdown the Cavs put on the Lakers at Staples Center.

But this idea (that's been floating around the basketball world since late last night) that there was some sort of baton handoff last night is nothing short of preposterous.

Ask the Orlando Magic how important those two regular season wins over the Lakers were come playoff time last year. They'll tell you that they meant nothing in the final analysis.

All that said, we'd be foolish to totally dismiss the Cavs' dominance over the Lakers as just part of a meaningless regular season.

Bryant admitted after the game that the Cavs are certainly the hungrier bunch right now, as Elliott Teaford of the Los Angeles Daily News noted: "I think last year we probably were a little hungrier and played a little harder," he said. "This year when we played them the two times, they were the hungrier team. I think they sensed if they want to win a championship they're going to have to go after it. So they're playing with a sense of urgency we played with last year."

That's understandable. The Cavs want what the Lakers already have, so it's natural for the hunter to play with a little more fire than the hunted.

Bryant, however, wasn't nearly as understanding of his teammates' lack of recognition in that regard, particularly after they'd already witnessed as much from the Cavs on Christmas.

"This is what they do," he told Teaford of the LA Daily News and other reporters. "We have to try to step up to match that. That's not part of our DNA. We have to step up to match that and still play skillful basketball. We blew a couple of assignments defensively. There were a couple of (lapses)." Bryant then joked: "I'm going to go to practice and I'm going to strangle every single one of them. They know I'm (angry). I don't want to say anything more right now. We'll leave this game behind and we'll get back to work."