[0] LAKERS' VULNERABILITY BREEDS MARCH MAGIC.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

Some people say Sacramento's Rick Adelman is coaching like none other in the wild West. Not me.

Phil Jackson is my hands-down pick for Coach of the Year honors for the way he wisely, willfully held Isaiah Rider out of the starting lineup all this time so the fallout would be minimal in the event the Rider experiment blew up in the Lakers' faces.

Think about it. If Rider had been a fixture in the Lakers' offense as hoped, his five-game suspension for violating the NBA's anti-drug program would have been devastating.

Instead, it doesn't even qualify as a distraction.

The Lakers played their second game without a suspended Rider on Friday and took the Spurs to overtime before falling 93-89. Of course, on this night Jackson could have started Chick Hearn and nobody would have been the wiser, so immense was the shadow cast by Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant, who put up 56 of the team's 88 shots and accounted for 80 percent of the team's scoring.

That's not the script the Lakers had followed in winning their four previous games. Oh, well. It was a highly entertaining game, even if the ending left the partisan Staples Center crowd a little deflated.

Clearly, these are not the same Lakers who on this date last year were 17 consecutive wins into a streak that would reach 19 before the Washington Wizards snapped it. If they haven't looked quite the same, there's a reason and, no, his name isn't Glen Rice.

``It's a lot easier putting together a winning streak,'' Lakers forward Robert Horry said, ``when you don't have the bull's-eye on your back.''

Dodging all those poison darts can get dicey. And yet, really, it's not as if the Lakers have fallen this year and they can't get up. They were 28-4 at home on this date last year and 24-6 at Staples Center before Friday's game, a drop-off that would hardly be discernible if San Antonio, Portland and Sacramento weren't stalking the Lakers as trouble does Rider.

During Horry's four seasons in Houston, he can remember players - heck, he was one of them - looking forward to the L.A. swing because of the recreational smorgasbord and glut of great restaurants that awaited them. The game against the Lakers was almost an afterthought.

The NBA strain of spring fever isn't infecting Lakers opponents this year. Everybody comes intent on knocking off the reigning world champions as opposed to simply knocking about The Gate, a popular Hollywood nightspot.

``Now they're saying, 'We've got to get these guys,' '' Horry said, not, ``Oh, we're going to hang out in L.A.''

Asked to handicap the snugger-than-a-Laker Girls-outfit West, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich unwittingly corroborated Horry's contention. The Lakers, he said, ``are the champions. You bet they're the team to beat.''

Given the extra baggage the Lakers are carrying courtesy of last year's championship, the fact they are bunched with four other teams in the race to be top banana in the Western Conference is palatable. Impressive, even, considering Derek Fisher has yet to play his first minute, O'Neal, Bryant and Ron Harper have been lost for stretches and Rider has been just lost.

The Lakers are getting healthier - well, all except Bryant, who graced the starting lineup even though he missed the morning shootaround with an upset stomach. Not coincidentally, their collective game has never looked more hale than it has this month.

The Lakers have held their last five opponents under 96 points, the first time they've managed that all season (in 2000 they put together three streaks of at least five games during which they held opponents to 95 points or less).

``Lately, I think you've seen the Lakers playing with more of a sense of urgency because they know (the playoffs) are coming,'' Popovich said before the game. ``They'll be more than ready when the playoffs come. Guaranteed.''

In the meantime, the Lakers, Spurs, Jazz, Kings and Trail Blazers are scrapping for wins every night as though there's no tomorrow; they're preoccupied with head-to-head records; they have one eye on the playoffs and the other on the scoreboard: In short, they're acting just like collegiate teams in the final week before the NCAA Tournament seedings are announced.

March Madness has invaded the NBA and thank goodness for that. What a welcome sight it is to see every team from top to bottom getting after it every night instead of simply going through the motions.

It's amazing when you think about it: Phoenix occupied the eighth spot in the West at Friday's start, yet the Suns had less ground to make up (six games) to reel in the conference-leading Jazz than second-place Milwaukee did front-running Philadelphia in the East.

``I've never seen anything like it,'' said the Spurs' Steve Kerr, a guard in his 13th season. ``One loss can drop you three or four places.''

One loss in March can make or break a team's dreams of securing a homecourt advantage for the playoffs. It's not madness, it's magical.