ARE LAKERS FANS PLAYOFF-READY, TOO?

Byline: Kevin Modesti

The question isn't whether the Lakers are up to the challenge of bringing Staples Center its first professional championship and Los Angeles sports fans their first professional championship since 1988.

The question is whether the arena and the fans are up to it.

The only practical benefit of having won an NBA-best 67 games in the regular season is that the Lakers earned the home-court advantage in all four playoff rounds. But how much of an advantage will that turn out to be, should the team have to lean on it in a close series?

The stereotypical image of L.A. crowds - late to their seats, early to their cars, quiet enough to eavesdrop on the stars in the $500 seats - has only grown more painfully accurate since the Lakers moved from the Forum to Staples Center at the start of this season.

Phil Jackson notices the fans with the cellular phones pressed to their ears, waiting for a camera to point their direction, then waving to a friend watching on TV. He never saw that at United Arena, let alone Chicago Stadium.

``We play in a different (kind of) arena,'' the head coach said the other day at the Lakers' practice facility in El Segundo. ``It's not loud. The focus is sometimes not on the court. Sometimes it's on the people in the crowd.

``It's an entertainment arena.''

At a basketball arena, a season like Shaquille O'Neal's would have elicited a nightly ``MVP!'' chant.

But not until March did a Staples Center crowd take up the campaign. It was the night O'Neal dropped 61 points on the Clippers. The twist is that it wasn't technically a Lakers crowd. It was a Clippers home game, with Clippers season-ticket holders.

Lately, at Lakers home games, ``MVP!'' chants have been attempted in the upper deck but haven't caught on at sea level.

A number of excuses could be made for the audible absence of passion.

The 19,282-seat Staples Center, its stands sloping gradually away from the court, is so vast that crowd noise gets lost in space.

The high ticket prices squeeze ``real fans'' out of the building, leaving the choice seats on the lower luxury-box levels to corporate types and friends of season-ticket holders.

The ``real fans'' are relegated to the upper deck - and in the rafters nobody can hear you scream.

Add the annoying fact the lights in the Staples Center stands aren't dimmed during the action, and it's no wonder fans tend to stare at each other as much as at the game. (Or so I'm told; I, of course, pay rapt attention to the court at all times.)

Lakers players and coaches don't complain. But after a season in the downtown arena, they must know their home-court advantage isn't what it should be.

They went 36-5 at home, 31-10 on the road. The five-game difference was only 20th best in the NBA this year. The Lakers' home-court edge has been smaller only twice in the past 25 years. Of course, the fact they were good enough to win everywhere they went had something to do with that; but a five-game difference is relatively low even compared to previous teams with 65-plus wins.

In the first-round playoff series against the Sacramento Kings, the home-court edge will be dulled further by the weird calendar demanded by NBC television executives. The Kings will use the unusual gap between today's Game 1 and Thursday night's Game 2 in Los Angeles to fly home for three nights. They wouldn't be able to do that on the normal every-other-day schedule.

As a result, the Kings will sleep in their own beds for all but three nights in a 13-day span if they're able to stretch the series to a decisive Game 5 in Los Angeles on May 5.

So it's up to the people who pile through the turnstiles and call themselves Lakers diehards to make sure the Kings remember they were here. The Staples Center may never become known as The Pit or The Madhouse. But it can be louder.

If you're planning to sit on your hands, go to the opera instead. If you need the message board to tell you when to yell, give your ticket to a kid or a Clipper - it might be his first playoff game.

``I don't like the scoreboard to encourage the crowd,'' Jackson said. ``I like it when the crowd connects with the players because they're enthusiastic about the effort the players are putting out on the court, that's when that energy becomes real.

``Our crowd can get it going sometimes.''

Now would be a good time.