IT'S A BETTER LIFE FOR GEORGE.

Byline: STEVE DILBECK

MINNEAPOLIS - Lakers forward Devean George pulls his car up in front of the pale yellow two-story home where he grew up. There are aluminum awnings over the windows and a small wrought-iron rail alongside the five cement steps that lead to the front door.

On the street level, to the right of the steps, is the concrete slab of an uncovered porch. George points to it.

``Right there,'' George says. ``Right there at the corner before the tree.''

In an instant, it is that humid summer afternoon almost eight years ago. He was home from college, upstairs doing laundry. On the porch, 12-year-old brother Chafe and his best friend, Byron Phillips Jr., as always, were playing together.

Phillips lived across the street, but spent most of his time at the George home. Carol George, a hair stylist, cut both their hair. Fed them most of the meals.

George could hear them playing below when there was a sudden popping sound.

``I thought they were playing with fire crackers on the porch,'' George says. ``I heard (Phillips) yelling, `Chafe, I'm hit! I'm hit!' He had fallen off the side of the porch. My brother kept saying, `Quit playing. Are you serious? Quit playing. Quit playing!' ''

Phillips wasn't playing. He was the unintended victim of a drive-by gang shooting. He would never play again.

``It was one bullet,'' George says. ``There wasn't a lot of blood. Just one small bullet hole that went right through his chest.''

One was all it took. Phillips died at the scene.

George took a vow that day. Made a promise to himself and his family. One that had to sound fairly ludicrous to everyone in that gang-ravaged North Minneapolis neighborhood. To anyone who had even heard of his little Division III school, Augsburg College.

``We had a meeting that day,'' says Augsburg coach Brian Ammann. ``Devean missed it and I was upset.

``But then he came into my office the next day, sat down and told me what happened. He told me he was going to make it in the NBA and get his family out of that neighborhood.''

George peers through the car window. One bullet. Maybe a few more feet, and it's his brother lying on the slab. The neighborhood violence that he had almost accepted as a part of his life would never again be tolerated.

``That was a point right there that just added more fuel to wanting to get my folks out of the area,'' he says. ``When you're in that environment, you don't have to be involved in what's going on. You can have a clean nose, work your job every day, be a normal person, and tragedy can happen.''

His parents, Eddie and Carol, had done everything they could to keep their three sons protected. They both worked two jobs to send their children to private schools. Eddie was a truck driver who did night security. Carol ran her hair salon and did custodial work.

But the summer of 1996 was particularly brutal in their neighborhood. Minneapolis had recently opened a police station only a few blocks from the George home.

``It seemed like once they got the police station there, things got worse,'' George says. ``A lot of crime and killings, and people doing what they had to do to survive. Minneapolis was called `Murder-appolis' at one point that summer in The New York Times.''

If George was going to escape, going to realize his dream, he would have to beat heavy odds. Division III players are barely on the athletic map. They don't earn scholarships. Not one player had ever been drafted in the first round by the NBA.

And George had been this skinny, 6-foot-2 guard from a Benilde-St. Margaret High hardly then renowned for basketball. Ammann saw something in George, but Augsburg - with just 3,000 students - cost $20,000 per year to attend.

There were student loans, grants, supportive parents and an honest coach when George told Ammann he planned to join the NBA.

``My first reaction was, `Let's get a degree,' '' Ammann says. ``It's not our job here to prepare people for the NBA, but a profession they chose to major in.

``But I never once told him he wouldn't make it.''

Like his older brother, George underwent a remarkable growth spurt. By his junior season, he was 6-7 and the off-guard became a dominant forward. He considered transferring to a D-I school to gain more NBA attention, but he didn't want to risk losing credits earned at Augsburg.

He stayed, driven to succeed, to make his remarkable leap. He loved basketball, he loved his family, and one was going to help the other.

``I've never seen a guy work in the weight room like he did,'' Ammann says. ``He could barely bench 150 pounds when he got here. He was benching 300 when he left.''

He was already a terrific leaper and had a remarkable wing span. By his senior season, he was averaging a school-record 27.5 points and 11.3 rebounds.

George was invited to the Portsmouth Invitational for draft prospects only when an Iowa player canceled, but he made the all-tournament team. He had captured the scouts' attention. Then in the 1998 draft, the Lakers took him with the 23rd overall pick.

With his first contract, George bought his mother a townhome in a better neighborhood 10 miles away. He paid off his student loans.

His first two seasons showed flashes of promising ability, but it was last year when he truly began to look like a No. 1 pick. Already a strong defender, he became a more confident offensive player. He earned regular minutes, averaged 7.1 points and earned an $18.7 million, four-year contract.

This time he bought his mother a home. She moved into it two weeks ago and had the Lakers over for dinner Sunday after their Game 1 playoff victory against the Timberwolves.

He says his parents are now separated, and his father still lives in the old family home, near friends and relatives and the YMCA where George honed his game as a youngster. In the corner house where young Phillips was shot to death.

``My dad, he doesn't want to leave,'' George says. ``He's crazy. I don't know why he stays here. There are bullet holes in my house, in the walls, from a shooting a month ago. There's always shootings. Every summer I'm back here, there's shootings.

``I don't go visit him until daylight. It's not the place to be hanging out. Growing up, we thought that was just normal. But I'm more afraid now than I was then. I didn't really realize the danger.''

George pulls away from the house in the black Mercedes he bought his mother. On the side of his old home is a brown, rusting Buick with a smashed-in truck. His college car.

``I kind of wanted to hold onto it,'' he says. ``When I come back home, I drive it sometimes to keep me level and grounded.''

A siren wails somewhere nearby as he turns a corner.

``See that red house on the corner, I swear it sounded like Vietnam one night,'' he says. ``It was like eight different guns. Some guy got shot up over a dice game. The thing about it is, he lived.''

He drives by the rec center where he hung out as a child, where his brother Chafe now works. He's worries about his brother.

``He's still scarred,'' George says. ``They were just sitting on a porch. He's still dealing with that right now. I'm thinking about trying to get him to see somebody to help him.''

The neighborhood is undergoing an awkward transformation, with many old homes being bought and destroyed to make way for spotty redevelopment.

Where deserted old brick buildings once stood, now there is a new strip mall. A mile from his home, clean new apartments rise where the projects once stood.

``Like 10 people living in a room the size of a hotel room,'' he says. ``A lot of fighting and killing and roaches. It even smelled bad over here.''

George has been in the NBA three years and won three championships. His parents work one job now because they choose to. George is wealthy and still improving as a player.

He turns toward downtown, his old neighborhood now in the rear-view mirror, though always with him.

``I've truly been blessed,'' he says. ``It feels like things get better and better every day. It feels like I'm living a dream.''

LAKERS at MINNESOTA

What: Western Conference quarterfinals, Game 2

When: Today, 6:30 p.m.

TV/Radio: Ch. 9 TNT; 570-AM

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Lakers' Devean George says a drive-by shooting that killed the friend of his younger brother drove him to get his family out of the violent North Minneapolis neighborhood.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer

(2) Devean George's roots may be in Minnesota, but he's realized his dream by becoming part of the Lakers.

Edna T. Simpson/Daily News