NO ANSWERS FOR THIS AGE-OLD PROBLEM.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

If the Lakers can't outshoot, outrebound and outrun the Houston Rockets, they do have another way to win this NBA playoff series.

Outlive 'em.

The L.A. starting lineup is a collective 37 years older than the Houston five, and it the experience edge shows up in all sorts of ways, none as memorable as this one.

Late in the first quarter of the Lakers' 98-84 victory Monday night at Staples Center, as they were struggling for the second game in a row to shake the series underdogs, Shaquille O'Neal was on the bench with two fouls and Karl Malone found himself guarding Yao Ming at the left edge of the lane.

Yao got the ball and posted up Malone, the 7-foot-6 center backing into the 6-foot-9 forward, the 23-year-old star muscling the 40-year-old icon.

Suddenly, Malone took a big step backward, and Yao tumbled over like an eavesdropper when the door opens, lamely flipping the ball over his head in the general direction of the hoop before landing stretched out across the paint.

Malone had just pulled the oldest trick in the book, but then he's the oldest player in the league.

It was 23-21 Lakers at that funny moment. Next thing you knew, the Rockets had gone 11 possessions with only one basket, and the Lakers had built an eight-point lead. Though the lead would disappear before reappearing bigger, Malone looking down at the fallen Yao remained the image of the night.

The Lakers are beginning pursuit of their fourth NBA championship in five years while the Rockets are in their first playoffs since 1999.

Malone is 40, his power-forward foe Kelvin Cato 29. O'Neal is 32, Yao 23. Gary Payton is 35, Steve Francis 27. Rick Fox is 35, Jim Jackson 33.

Kobe Bryant is 25, Cuttino Mobley 28 in the only match-up wherein - as Woody Allen would conclude - the Rocket could beat up the Laker.

With age comes bigger medical bills, of course.

Malone has a bad ankle, O'Neal a bad knee, Payton a bad back and Fox a bad thumb, and each of them has showed the effects at one point or another in these first two games.

With age comes a setting of one's ways, as well.

The four All-Stars haven't quite meshed this season, Bryant because he's a brash young pup but Malone, O'Neal and Payton because they're dogs too old to learn new tricks.

With age may at some point come tight nerves.

Maybe, in the middle of a key sequence, Malone or Payton will be seized by the realization this shot, this pass or this defensive decision will determine their championship fates.

So much for the downsides of being creaky.

Basically, here in the opening round of the playoffs, it's a good thing for the Lakers to have the postseason veterans while the Rockets have the talented kids.

As O'Neal, Bryant, Fox and Fisher can testify - recalling the pre-Phil Jackson springs of Lakers frustration - you have to learn to be an NBA champion. You don't get what you want the first time you get in the tournament, as Yao and Francis would like. You have to live and learn and grow together as a team, even if it takes so long that by the time it clicks, the game is shuffleboard instead of basketball.

The Lakers won the series opener Saturday night 72-71 despite getting outshot (38.2 to 32.9 percent), outrebounded (51-41) and out-fast-breaked by the Rockets. Game 2 Monday night was developing the same way.

It just looks as if the Lakers know ways to win that the Rockets have only read in a high-school textbook.

Now the Pacific Division champions are ahead 2 games to 0, and they have to feel pretty good about it, because they haven't taken a 2-0 lead and gone on to lose a best-of-seven series since the 1969 NBA Finals that the Boston Celtics won by a bucket in Game 7 at the Forum.

The teams don't play again until Friday in Houston. That's three days off for the Lakers to rest their weary bones.

And three days off for the Rockets to absorb the lessons of a long weekend in Los Angeles.