A RIDER ON THE RISE? LAKERS GUARD IS ADJUSTING TO NEW ROLE.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

The most uncommunicative Laker is rarely without his cell phone. Isaiah Rider is like Linus Van Pelt and his security blanket that way.

There are times his cell phone is the only thing that has his ear. It accompanies him into the training room, it leaves with him after practice. On a recent one-game trip, it was about the only thing he carried on the plane.

Yes, that's right: The Laker who comes with the most baggage is the one who travels the lightest. A curious contradiction. Of course, so is this: Rider embraces accessibility's hardware and yet for the most part remains maddeningly out of reach.

Lakers coach Phil Jackson describes Rider as ``pretty much of a loner. Most of the time he stays pretty much closed up.''

Rider is not an open book, that's for sure. He's harder to read than ``War and Peace.''

He can be engaging and churlish; earnest and indifferent; sensitive and callous. If you don't like how he's acting, wait an hour.

Rider's mood has more swings than a playground.

Jackson, a resourceful prospector of psyches, has been mining Rider's for three months without finding that one golden nugget of insight. So far there have been no cries of ``Eureka!''

Asked the other day what it is that drives his 29-year-old shooting guard, Jackson said, ``I'm trying to feel that question out myself.''

When the question is posed to Rider, he has a ready answer.

``I came here to possibly be a part of a championship team,'' he said. ``That's my motivation.''

Jackson said Rider has told him that he wishes to put a positive spin on his career.

Lord knows Rider has come to the right city. L.A. is the place where images go to get face lifts.

If Tom Hayden, Courtney Love and Gary Sheffield were able to pull off the punk-to-pillar makeover, why not Rider?

Because pro athletes exist to entertain us, to offer the paying public an escape from the workaday world, we sometimes forget they are people too, with sick children and healthy mortgages and hearts that bleed and friends in need.

For the size of the paychecks pro athletes command nowadays, we expect them to neatly compartmentalize their lives, to treat personal concerns and performance as if they were socks and underwear and keep them in separate drawers.

Some people are better than others at subdividing their lives. Rider tends to let messes in one drawer spill onto the floor until he's wading ankle-deep in worry.

At the Lakers' practice on the eve of their game Wednesday against Utah, Rider spent the first half-hour in a fog, his mind drifting to a hospital a few miles away where a friend lay after taking a stray bullet over the holiday weekend.

Rider didn't breathe a word about his friend's plight to any of his teammates. He didn't give Jackson any clue as to why he might be a bit distracted. For all anybody knew, Rider couldn't wait for practice to be over because he couldn't care less.

Rider doesn't confide in his teammates because he questions whether anyone who barely knows him can really have his back.

He admittedly has trust issues. Rider remains convinced, despite their denials, that Atlanta teammates Dikembe Mutombo and LaPhonso Ellis were the ones who turned him in last season for smoking marijuana in his hotel room.

``I went through a bad time with old teammates,'' Rider said. ``So it's hard for me to see how anyone on the team is going to be there for me.''

Led by Horace Grant, the Lakers are chiseling away at the wall Rider has constructed.

``I really do feel their support,'' Rider said. ``I think at the beginning my teammates didn't know how to read me. For a while, I didn't know where I stood on the team. I didn't even know if they liked me.''

Their fondness for him looked real enough at the end of Tuesday's practice. Rider was driving on the starters for scores, drawing slaps and salutations from his victims.

The next night against the Jazz, Rider's shooting was cold but he contributed two good assists (and two rebounds to go with six points) in 19 minutes in the Lakers' 82-71 win.

After the game, Jackson singled Rider out for praise for the rope he threw to Kobe Bryant on an alley-oop play. That was a frame worth freezing, to be sure. But in the bigger picture, Rider's first assist was more significant.

He drove to the basket, sucked in a couple Jazz defenders, then passed out to a wide-open Rick Fox. Never had Rider looked less like a square peg in the Lakers' triangle offense.

``It felt good to make some plays,'' an upbeat Rider said.

It hasn't been easy for Rider, going from skippering Minnesota and Portland and Atlanta to being an NBA minimum-wage deckhand for the defending world champions.

Rider spent the entire first quarter Wednesday trying to keep his stout lower body loose and limber in anticipation of the call that finally came when the game was 14 minutes old. It has taken some adjusting, being auxiliary power when all your life you've been the main switch.

``Certain days I accept it,'' Rider said. ``Certain days I don't.''

Jackson has practiced tough love on Rider. After Rider was held out of a game in his hometown of Oakland for not appearing focused, Jackson told the recalcitrant Rider something to the effect of, ``Sure, you're a talented player. But I can win with Shaq and Kobe and Mike Penberthy. We need you and I want you to be a part of what we're doing. But you're not going to get a free pass just because you're talented.''

That got Rider's attention.

``He has philosophies. He doesn't coach like other coaches in the league,'' Rider said. ``I respect that. He's won. I respect that. My brain is tired of wondering when I'm going to get in, how many minutes I'm going to get. I'm just waiting my turn.''

Since the Lakers took a flier on Rider in August, they've been pointing to January. This is the month Rider is supposed to start to click with the triangle offense.

His turn is now. His cell phone is ringing. It's the Lakers. This is one call he can't afford not to answer.

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Photo: (color) ``I came here to possibly be a part of a championship team. That's my motivation.'' -- Isaiah Rider

Eric Grigorian/Special to the Daily News