LAKERS DO DARNDEST THINGS.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Aren't they precious, these kids leading the Lakers to the giddiest 3-0 start in the team's history?

Yes, they're just as precious as your basic 280-pound bundles of tattooed muscle can be.

Obviously Phil Jackson, in missing much of training camp to recover from an operation, never got around to telling his teens and early twentysomethings how it's done in the NBA.

So they've charged into the season wild-eyed, ferocious and desperate, acting like they're supposed to try to win all these November games, as if it's some kind of Amateurville knockout tournament.

Their high-spirited charging up and down the floor is so cute, you have to forgive them for embarrassing the adults in public.

Did you see Ronny Turiaf on Wednesday at Golden State, and Friday against Seattle? Scoring, rebounding, blocking shots, punching the air, living it up -- he's 23, and he just willed the Lakers to those wins, the sort of efforts a veteran saves for the playoffs.

Have you watched Andrew Bynum? Calling for passes from Kobe Bryant on the offensive end, all-out patrolling the middle on the other end -- at 19, he's working so hard, the old guys must be exhausted just looking at him.

And how about that Jordan Farmar? Nobody had the 19-year-old from Taft High of Woodland Hills and UCLA averaging 17 heart-pumping minutes a game in his first week of pro ball. I guess this is one way for Jackson to deal with the kids, let them run around and tire themselves out.

Which has to happen sometime, the tiring-out part, maybe tonight when the Lakers play the SuperSonics again in Seattle.

I said to Ronny Turiaf, ``You can't keep this up, can you?''

``Why wouldn't I?'' he said in the locker room late Friday. ``I only play for 15 minutes at a time -- 15, 17, sometimes 30. Basketball is fun. I go out there and try to hustle. Phil Jackson sits me down in practice sometimes, tells me I have to be ready to go into games cold. So I get my rest in practice.''

See, the way you're supposed to do it in the NBA is pace yourself. The regular season starts around Halloween and ends around Tax Day. The 5(bul) months in between are just as scary, what with 82 games to play, and about 160 takeoffs and landings, and those back-to-backs on the road.

Jackson is the biggest proponent of pacing yourself. The coach figures it's not how you start or even how you look at the All-Star break, it's how you round into form at the finish, going into the playoffs. The basketball season matches the school year not only on the calendar but also in the sense that it's a learning process.

Jackson's teams usually are better at the end than at the beginning.

Of his 15 playoff teams in Chicago and Los Angeles, eight had better records in the playoffs than in November. The competition is theoretically tougher in the playoffs.

I was being only slightly facetious when I asked Jackson: ``If athletes learn more from losing than from winning, how is the teaching process is affected when a young team wins from the get-go like this?''

``I don't think you get as many (teaching) points across when they're winning,'' Jackson said. ``Winning covers a multitude of errors. ... We know there's a lot of improvement necessary.''

As Turiaf acknowledged: ``We're going to have to make mistakes to learn.''

The Lakers are one of the youngest teams in the NBA this season, as if you couldn't tell by the fact Kobe (28) is the franchise's elder statesman.

They have a couple of thirtysomethings, guards Aaron McKie (34) and Shammond Williams (31), but the former is injured and the latter has played in one game.

Then they have seven players who were 25 or younger in the lid-lifting upset of Phoenix on Tuesday: Turiaf, Bynum, Farmar, Sasha Vujacic (22), Brian Cook (25), Smush Parker (25) and Vladimir Radmanovic (25). Plus Kwame Brown (24), who is hurt.

The only other teams with this many 25-and-unders are Atlanta, Boston, Golden State, New York and Philadelphia. All were losers last year and aren't expected to do a lot this year.

Not that the Lakers were expected to do a lot this year, either. But then the ref tossed the ball up and the kids got after it.

At this point in past seasons, Shaquille O'Neal would still be getting over toe surgery and preparing to walk through the winter months. For that matter, Bryant (knee, missed first two games) and Jackson (hip, missed Golden State trip) are just getting over surgeries.

What's happened here is that the injuries to Bryant, Brown and Chris Mihm opened the playpen door. And out rushed a bunch of guys with something to prove, no reason to hold back, clinging to a silly notion that the competition begins on opening night.

Somebody told Turiaf he looks like he ``wants it'' more than everybody else.

``I don't think so,'' he said. ``It's just that my way of wanting it is different from everybody else. I express myself a little more.''

They'll all learn. But let's hope not.

heymodesti(AT_SIGN)aol.com

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