ANALYSIS: MAYBE IT'S TIME TO LISTEN JACKSON WANT THE LAKERS TO GET SEASON IN FOCUS.

Byline: Howard Beck Staff Writer

EL SEGUNDO - Beyond the frustration and feuds, the moments of desperation and the hours spent searching for answers, the state of the Lakers can best be described with a single emotion:

Annoyance.

They play just well enough to win two-thirds of their games, enough to keep puffing out their chests, declare everything's all right and that better times are ahead.

Then they're just inconsistent enough to lose games they shouldn't, just overconfident enough to understimate opponents and just fragile enough to be crushed under the weight of their own weaknesses.

So the Lakers are mired in a self-created limbo, where the demons and angels and flawed human beings all coexist uneasily, waiting for judgment. Waiting for an identity. Stuck between winner and loser. Heaven and hell.

And how annoying is that?

``I think the mood today, everybody was a little angry and a little upset,'' Kobe Bryant said Monday, a day after an embarrassing loss to Miami that served as the latest of many presumed wake-up calls. ``And it was good. I'm glad we are getting to this point.''

The ``point'' being at least a small sense of stress and failure, the kind of situation that allows coach Phil Jackson to step in and say, ``See, fellas, you don't have all the answers. Now listen up.''

When the Lakers were running off double-digit winning streaks last season, Jackson fretted that nothing could be learned from success. It was only when they lost six of nine games in late January that he was able to iron out the kinks, which kick-started the championship run.

This season, the Lakers are not good enough to whitewash their faults (they have yet to win more than five games in a row). But nor are they screwed up enough to feel the strain (they have yet to lose more than two in a row).

Even now, with a 3-3 record in their last six games, three games behind West-leading Portland, and the season's halfway point creeping up, the Lakers are balancing confidence with crisis.

``I don't call it a crisis. I just say it's another bump in the road,'' Shaquille O'Neal said. ``But we just have to persevere and we just have to want to get it done.''

On Monday, Jackson tried to extract lessons from failure. Though they are light years off of last season's 67-15 pace, the Lakers (26-13) seem most nights to be within a possession or two of snapping all the pieces back into order.

No overhaul is needed, but Jackson wants to refocus the picture. On some level, he's had to do so after every championship he's won, including the four repeat seasons with the Chicago Bulls.

``I've coached a lot of teams and it takes lots of different combinations to put together winners,'' Jackson said. ``I've been fortunate to be in the winning end of it all the time for the most part, and there's just different times when teams come togther. So we are concerned, but we're not ultra-alarmed by any of the stuff we're doing.

``We know that it's the dog days of the season, we're going through some things that we'd like to work out a little bit better than we are right now, but we're OK, we're going to be fine.''

``I'm just challenging them a little bit more,'' Jackson said. ``I usually like a team to work out their roles and work out kind of their own pecking order, as far as what works as a team, so it really comes as their own invention - or as they say, what the mother of invention is, and that's necessity.''

A sloppy season has necessitated Jackson using a heavier hand and perhaps dictating roles with more authority now. The still-simmering Shaq-Kobe issues might have to be settled with some finality.

But all X's and O's and egos aside, recent losses have at least brought to the fore the Lakers' other dirty little secret: They're out of shape.

``We're not in shape and we're losing ballgames because of it,'' Bryant said.

Jackson agreed and took some of the responsibility for it himself. Jackson said he's relying too heavily on Ron Harper, in particular, and will have to scale back the playing time of several aging veterans.

``But for the most part, I think we got by with it last year, we'll be able to get by with it this year,'' Jackson said.

O'Neal's shape is a more serious concern. Already this season, he's had five games in which he didn't block a shot, and six others with only one block. He's only had two 20-rebound games (he had nine last year) and has been held to single digits in rebounds nine times.

O'Neal is the safety net. When he falters, it weakens the entire team's defense.

``With Shaquille in the middle, we're giving more penetration than really we should be,'' Jackson said. ``People should be afraid to penetrate against us, and ultimately a lot of people are just taking penetration as the first goal. They're going to take the ball to the basket against us and hopefully get Shaq in foul trouble.''

Jackson said O'Neal's on-court fatigue in part stems from his off-court attempts to get into shape.

``He's trying to lose some weight and trying to recondition himself, and I think he's almost taking it to an extreme, where he's limiting the amount of energy he has,'' Jackson said. ``I think he's ultimately doing some things that fatigued him a little bit (Sunday), and I think those are some things we have to address too.''

O'Neal said the Lakers' defense - by everyone's estimation, their Achilles' heel - is a teamwide problem. He also dismisses the notion that the Lakers' conditioning is a major concern.

So the Lakers' search for an identity, for the root of their problems, for the answers, for a winning streak, for any positive signs, goes on.

``But we've been here before,'' O'Neal said. ``It's something we just have to work through. We just have to have perseverance.''

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Photo: (color) Lakers coach Phil Jackson has been deep in thought lately, trying to figure out just what's wrong with his basketball team.

Steve Wilson/Associated Press