FOR LAKERS, BETTER DOESN'T MEAN BEST.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

EL SEGUNDO - The Lakers have been turning heads in the basketball equivalent of ``Are You Hot?'' - the latest network game show to put a premium on skin-deep analysis.

They have been hot, winning a season-high seven games in a row before a clunker against San Antonio, Kobe Bryant averaging 40 points during the streak, sportswriters and sports-talk hosts climbing over each other to be the most premature in proclaiming Kobe the MVP.

But being hot enough to impress the Lorenzo Lamases of the NBA's courtside judging panel is one thing. Being hot enough to win a fourth consecutive NBA championship is something else. A closer look suggests the 7-0 run that made everybody say ``They're back!'' had better not represent the best the Lakers can do.

A loss this evening against the dreadful New York Knicks at Staples Center, and the Lakers are right back where they were last month after an earlier encouraging stretch ended with homecourt defeats against Golden State and New Jersey.

A convincing victory over the Knicks, and it can be said that the Lakers are making progress.

``I think we're there,'' Shaquille O'Neal said after a short Lakers practice Saturday. ``Not at the level we need to compete (for the championship), but good enough to stay above .500.''

Good enough to make the playoffs and take their chances.

But good enough to be the team to fear if every team comes in at its best?

The Lakers haven't been as carried away by their recent run as some of their fans. The players have described a gradual improvement, as opposed to an abrupt return to form.

``As we said earlier in the season, we can't allow one win or one loss to all of a sudden be the golden win or the golden loss ... we win one game and we're the best team in the league,'' Derek Fisher said Saturday. ``We just have to keep going, keep pushing.

``We've made great strides in recent weeks. Even with a disappointing home loss like (Friday) night, we still have to continue to remain confident that we're getting better. We are better than we were a month ago, and hopefully by this time next month we'll be better than we are today.''

The first 50 games of the Lakers' season have been a search for Shaq's health, Kobe's inner Michael Jordan, the rest of the players' energy and the whole cast's collective peak performance.

It came together in solid road victories over Phoenix and Pacific Division-leading Sacramento in the last week of January, continued at home against Utah and on the road against Eastern Conference-leading Indiana, and reached full swagger in road wins over New York and Denver on either side of a Staples Center pasting of the awful Nuggets.

Having been a season-worst 11-19 and five games out of the eighth and last playoff spot on the day after Christmas, the Lakers went into the San Antonio game 26-23 and threatening to blow past bubble team Houston.

They're back?

Math doesn't have all the answers, but if the question is whether the Lakers of February 2003 are as good as the Lakers of the three NBA titles, the answer is an insistent ``no.''

Impressed by seven victories in a row? The Lakers won nine in a row near the start of the 2001-02 season, eight in a row at the end of the 2000-01 season (and 11 in a row at the start of those playoffs), and 19, 16 and 11 in a row at different points in the 1999-2000 season.

Impressed by the quality of those seven victories, in which they faced teams whose average game this season was a 2.4-point loss and beat them by 11.3 points, implying they've been 8.9 better than the league's ``average''? The Lakers did better than that in a 10-game stretch near the start of '01-02 (10.7 above average), in the playoffs of '01-02 (9.6), in the last 10 games of '00-01 (10.9) and in the 19-game winning streak in '99-00 (13.0).

They're not far from their old selves. But they're not there yet.

Think Sacramento and Western Conference-leading Dallas should be impressed? During the Kings' 11 games before Chris Webber's injury in January, and during the Mavericks' 14-game winning streak at the start of the season, each team was dominating opponents at a 14-point-above-average clip.

``The streak has been great for us because we do have our confidence back,'' Bryant said, and maybe they can make it a springboard to higher heights. ``We are in the playoff hunt, even though we lost (the San Antonio) game. It's definitely restored a lot of our confidence, a lot of our belief that we can just (at least) get into the playoffs.''

I don't think anybody doubts they'll make the playoffs, or that given their experience on that stage, they'll know how to show their best side there. The issue is whether their best will be good enough to win.

Are they hot? Yes.

Hot enough? Not yet.