BUSS DIDN'T PAY PRICE FOR SUCCESS.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Between the mock movie trailers to promote the Lakers' epic quest for a fourth consecutive NBA title (a work of fiction, it turns out) and the reminders to cast All-Star votes for our favorite Lakers (they have got to be kidding), the Staples Center video screens have been advertising a historic display in the arena lobby.

Apparently for the amusement of fans who can't bear to watch the games anymore, Lakers owner Jerry Buss' eight championship rings are available for viewing.

What, that doesn't excite you?

Maybe the display would seem more relevant if Buss himself were on exhibit, showing fans the two ring fingers that look as if they'll remain empty after this season.

It is largely through Buss' handiwork that the Lakers have dominated their league in recent years like few teams have ever done in any sport. But it is largely through Buss' handiwork that the Lakers have tumbled more embarrassingly this season than any three-time champ ever has.

Now it's time for the man in charge to stand and take the blame.

I don't suppose that here in his late 60s, Buss is tortured much by regret, this man from the Wyoming mining country who studied and worked hard and built a life of academic excellence, girls, real-estate riches, girls, sports-world glamour and girls.

But if he's being honest with himself, Buss is wishing he'd done it differently the past two summers when it came to spending money to improve the Lakers' roster.

The sick feeling should have rushed over him, up there in his B-level suite at Staples Center, as he watched the Sacramento Kings outclass the Lakers 105-99 on Christmas night, widening the gap between the Pacific Division's best and sixth-best teams to 11 1/2 games.

Did Buss notice the contributions of Kings Keon Clark and Jim Jackson, important backups Sacramento signed as free agents in August and November?

They are players the Lakers could have gotten but their rivals got instead.

The sick feeling might not be new, though.

Has Buss checked out what Donyell Marshall and Larry Hughes have been doing in their first seasons with Chicago and Washington?

They, too, are players the Lakers could have bought but didn't.

It's not easy to attach the word ``cheap'' to an owner whose team's payroll of about $62 million ranks fifth in the NBA, only $5.5 million less than he paid Jack Kent Cooke in 1979 for the Lakers, hockey's Kings, the Forum and a 13,000-acre ranch.

And it's not easy to say he's set in penny-pinching ways when he accepted a projected $10 million hit in the league's luxury tax after this summer in order to keep Lakers veterans and re-sign Devean George.

But Buss has always kept his general managers - Jerry West, and now Mitch Kupchak - focused on the bottom line. Eventually he'd pay the price. Eventually arrived this fall.

In the summer of 2001, under league rules, the Lakers could have exercised their option to extend George's three-year contract through this season for $1.3 million. They decided not to commit that money to a still-unproven talent. The choice cost them some of their rights in future negotiations.

Come the summer of 2002, afraid of losing an athletic young player from their championship core, the Lakers had to give George a $4.5-million-a-year contract for four seasons.

Think they wish they'd had that money to spend on somebody other than a soft swingman shooting 37.2 percent?

--Clark, the 6-foot-11 forward, signed from Toronto for $4.5 million a year by Sacramento, is among the league leaders with 2.27 blocked shots a game and has the athletic energy the Lakers miss from Samaki Walker and Robert Horry.

--Jackson, the 11th-year guard, signed for $1 million after being let go by Miami, played good defense on Kobe Bryant and scored important fourth-quarter baskets against the Lakers.

--Clark and Jackson are two reasons Sacramento weathered their early-season injuries, something the Lakers couldn't.

--Marshall, the 6-foot-9 forward, signed for $4.5 million from Utah by Chicago in August, averages 15.2 points and 10.1 rebounds while out-shooting (at 49 percent) every Laker except Shaquille O'Neal.

--Hughes, the 23-year-old guard, signed for $4.5 million from Golden State by Washington in July, had five consecutive double-doubles (points and rebounds) this month.

How different that game against Sacramento might have looked if it was the Lakers who had Clark and Jackson. How much less shallow, creaky and complacent the Lakers might look tonight when they take a 12-19 record into a home game against Toronto. How much different the NBA season might look at the new year.

Though nobody could have anticipated how bad it would get for the Lakers, anyone could see that Sacramento and Dallas were catching up to them and the summer would call for improvement instead of maintenance.

The $5 million difference between their payroll and Dallas, and the $7 million between theirs and Sacramento's, is what keeps the Lakers from having one or two of the players named above and a better shot at a fourth title.

Jerry Buss, with eight championship rings in his collection, should have known that in the jewelry department you get what you pay for.