DEALING WITH PAIN IN NBA.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

We look at some of the Lakers' pregame routines and we're reminded of the stock car we once saw speeding along at 200 miles per hour with a bumper held together by duct tape.

Horace Grant sits at his locker with both feet soaking in a 48-quart cooler of ice water and both knees wrapped in ice packs.

Brian Shaw sits on a heating pad as though he were a pot of soup simmering on the stove, the better to let his hamstrings warm up.

Rick Fox lay on a massage table and is kneaded like bread dough.

A few of the players pop Advil as though they're M&Ms. Occasionally they'll swallow more powerful pills - Indocin, for instance, or Voltaren - so that they can move like the wind and not a Winnebago.

We see NBA players as sleek, high-performance machines. The truth? This time of the year their bodies are more like jalopies sputtering toward the junk heap. There's a room off to the side of the main locker room at Staples Center that might as well be called ``the Garage'' because it's where chief mechanic Gary Vitti and his crew of Chip Schaefer, Jim Cotta and Dan Garcia tinker with and tweak the players' chassis to get them purring like Ferraris.

Or in the case of Ron Harper or Robert Horry, get them running at least a little better than your father's beat-up Oldsmobile.

The Lakers have sat idling for a week since completing their sweep of San Antonio in the Western Conference finals. There are those who have spent the time wondering if the Lakers aren't losing their killer instinct along with a little of their conditioning. Then there's Grant, who feels as though he has gained 10 years of his life back in the last seven days.

The Lakers lowering the broom on the Spurs was just the elixir Grant needed. The break ``has helped me tremendously. Tre. Men. Dous. Ly,'' he repeated, drawing out each syllable. ``It feels like I'm 25 years old again.''

Grant, who turns 36 next month, said he felt ``about 70'' immediately after battling Tim Duncan - and Chris Webber and Rasheed Wallace before him.

So what else is new? Fox, 31, said the only people who have any clue how the average NBA veteran feels physically as the season winds down are cane-carrying members of AARP.

If you're curious to know what it's like to be the 36-year-old Harper, well, forget it. ``Only dead people know how he feels,'' Fox said.

He laughed. That Fox, he's quite the kidder.

In reality, it's not really funny what many of the players do so that we may continue to view the league as the National Bastion of Aerialists.

They subsist on a diet of prescription-strength anti-inflammatory drugs, steadfastly ignoring some of the side effects - the heartburn, for example, or the irregular heartbeat and the swelling of their hands and feet and face. The players wantonly will themselves not to think of what long-term damage they might be doing to their kidneys and liver and Lord knows what other organ.

If we didn't know better, we'd swear there's an unspoken code among the players: If you're not on Advil, you're not playing hard enough.

``I take three Advil before a game,'' Fox said. ``It's nothing serious. Every time I take it I know it's helping me for that moment. I've abused it over the past couple of years. It's gotten me through a lot of things. It does a good job. There comes a point every season where I have to take it.

``Everybody on our team knows that Advil is what will get you through when your body is breaking down. It just comes with the territory.''

For every professional ballplayer it eventually comes down to this: Your real opponent is pain.

If you're too hurt to play, it'll cost you dearly. You may collect your paycheck whether you're injured or not but the money trail has a way of drying up pretty quickly for those who can't fight through aches and pains and ankle sprains.

That's why deep-tissue massages and acupuncture treatments and chiropractic sessions, once considered voodoo therapy, are all in a day's work for today's professional ballplayer. Anything to keep the body from breaking down from the stress of a season that can stretch to 100 or more games, counting the preseason and the playoffs.

The Lakers will tell you Garcia owns the most valued hands this side of Allstate. He has been the team's full-time massage therapist since Phil Jackson's first year as coach.

Jackson created the position because he didn't want any of his players going to the extremes to get their weary muscles worked on that he did during his NBA career.

In the 1970s when he was playing for the Knicks, Jackson recalled visiting a massage parlor during a trip to L.A. He laughed recounting how he had to explain to the, uh, receptionist that he didn't want woo-woo therapy, that what he really needed was a deep-tissue massage and was there anybody who would accommodate that rather pedantic request?

Thank goodness for Garcia, said Shaquille O'Neal. The Big Hypotenuse of the Lakers' triangle offense doesn't have to be The Big Hypothesizer to imagine the headlines if he visited a massage parlor.

``It'd be all over ESPN's SportsCenter,'' he said.

Garcia tries to knead new energy into O'Neal's blood. He calls it ``waking up his legs.'' Every Laker requires a slightly different touch. Fox regularly needs his hips re-aligned because of all the twisting he does. Ditto for Derek Fisher.

Shaw's shoulders are his trouble spot. And Harper? Well, Garcia said, laughing, he just gets the WD-40 treatment. ``Like greasing an old wheel,'' is how Garcia put it.

The massages Garcia gives are not the ones you get at your neighborhood day spa.

``They hurt,'' Fox said. ``When you yelp, he digs deeper.''

It's like having your funny bone hit over and over, Shaw said. It feels great once it stops hurting. ``It's excruciating when you're going through it,'' Shaw said, ``but you feel better afterward.''

Of course, the human hand cannot always dig deep enough to massage the ache away. Sometimes the discomfort only can be reached by the fingers of anti-inflammatory drugs.

``There comes a point where you have to take them,'' Fox said. ``You don't last very long without them. Don't get me wrong. You weigh it every time. Nothing comes for free. There's a price to pay. It comes down to, are you willing to sacrifice some of the future for the present?

``You choose to do it because of the rewards that are right out in front of you. I don't know how wise it is.''

Not very, claims Dr. Jeff Stout.

``Guys are popping anti-inflammatory drugs like they're Pez candies,'' said Stout, the director of Sports Science for General Nutrition Center's pro performance sports supplements. ``They're making millions of dollars and they have endorsements and they have to do a good job. They have to find a way to ignore the pain and sometimes they take more than they should. They pop them until they start feeling better. They kind of overdo it.

``I know anti-inflammatories have their bad side. It's the same problem as with anything; you only get into problems when you take more than is recommended.''

In the Lakers' locker room, as in every inner sanctum in every pro sport, players are taking a harder look at anti-inflammatory drugs in the wake of the kidney problems suffered by the Miami Heat's Alonzo Mourning and the Spurs' Sean Elliott. Every pro athlete shudders to think that there but for the grace of God goes he.

``You try to stay away from anti-inflammatory medicine,'' Laker backup center Greg Foster said. ``Guys are asking more questions about what long-term effects there are on the body.''

Meanwhile, there are championships to be won, legacies to be secured. ...

And mea culpas to deliver?

``Some days you get out of bed, you have to look at the mirror to remember you're 35 and and not 70,'' Grant said. ``I want to say to (one-time Bulls teammate) Bill Cartwright, I'm sorry for laughing at him when I was 21.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Getting banged up is a part of life for Shaquille O'Neal and other players in the NBA.

Charlotte Schmid-Maybach/Staff Photographer

(2) Shaquille O'Neal faces physical and mental pressures whenever he touches the ball.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer