PAST TENSE, FUTURE PERFECT JELLING AT LAST, LAKERS WOULD BE CRAZY TO CONSIDER GOING THEIR SEPARATE WAYS.

MINNEAPOLIS - Now it all feels as inevitable as a Rick Fox restyle: Within hours, the Lakers can finish off the Minnesota Timberwolves and be NBA finalists. Within days, the Lakers can knock off the Detroit Pistons or the Indiana Pacers and be NBA champions. Within weeks, the Lakers can bow to their selfish interests and be broken apart.

Searching for just the right counsel for the team's players, coach and management in this pivotal period, we turn to the words of that eminent philosopher of the Freudian school, Woody Allen.

Waddaya, crazy or something?

Just as you're achieving the ``cohesiveness'' Phil Jackson has sought, are you really plotting a coming apart? Assuming you do win the title, can you really summon the unhappiness to want to leave L.A.? Wherever it is that each of you plans to go, do you all really think the basketball life can get better than this?

Since the Lakers trailed the San Antonio Spurs 2-0 and seemed on their way to an embarrassing second-round exit from the playoffs, they have become something close to what a team of such coaching and playing talent should be.

They have gone from dysfunctional to this functional - Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant are accommodating each other's talents as rarely before, Karl Malone is nearing mission accomplished, Gary Payton is finding ways to shine at last, and the supporting cast is enjoying spotlight moments.

The team has won seven of its past eight games, including three of four against Minnesota, and acting and sounding happier with itself than it has at any time this season.

With any other team, we'd be hearing how such success is an incentive to stay together. With the Lakers, we hear how the likelihood of a breakup is incentive to achieve success.

``I think that's what we talked about when we were down 0-2. There's nothing but today,'' Jackson said Friday in El Segundo before the Lakers flew to Minneapolis. ``Especially for this team. We're not talking about a dynasty of young players coming here and holding together for the next four, five years, winning championships. We're talking about playing this year, winning this year and letting the chips fall where they may. That's basically what you have to do anyway in this world.''

Jackson's contract is up, negotiations for a new deal were broken off by the club during the season, and the most definitive prediction he'll make is that if he coaches next season it will be with the Lakers. Speculation is that he's tired of trying to coach Bryant.

Bryant intends to opt out of his contract and try the free-agency market, and we'll see how his looming rape trial will affect whether he leaves the Lakers. Speculation is that he'd like to get away from Jackson and O'Neal.

O'Neal is under contract to the Lakers for two more seasons but is reported to worry the team will try to trade him and at least part of his salary before age catches up to him.

Malone, running neck-and-neck with age, can opt out of his Lakers contract after this one season in Los Angeles and has made a case for retiring if he gets his long-awaited championship.

Payton - last and, pertinently, least among the Lakers' four All-Stars - holds the same opt-out card as Malone and might want to flee a poor fit with or without the coveted title.

And Derek Fisher is another who can opt out, in his case to ride his series-turning shot against San Antonio and the resulting good-guy publicity to a leadership role with another franchise.

Each has reasons to consider leaving that are perfectly understandable.

At any other time and place.

But not when they're showing that they can work together.

Now, the Lakers hint that their newfound teamwork is a temporary phenomenon created in the playoffs' laboratory conditions.

``I think it has a lot to do with the playoffs coming around and everybody sensing this is the time of the year we've been waiting for,'' Bryant said after scoring 31 points Thursday night in the 92-85 victory that set up the Lakers to polish off Minnesota tonight at Target Center. ``When you have a goal, when you see the light at the end of the tunnel. When you have something immediate to play for, the games become more fun.''

``I think playing in pressure situations, playing up to an important ballgame, gives a satisfying feeling to ballplayers,'' Jackson said.

Bryant and O'Neal, said Jackson, have ``reverted back to a playoffs mode.''

But does it have to be only playoffs mode? Now that they've found it, could it be 2004-05 regular-season mode as well? Or, now that they know where to find it, could it at least be 2005 playoffs mode?

Lakers, does moving toward the championship make you think, even for a moment, about keeping the band together?

If it doesn't, you all really are crazy or something.

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(color) The Lakers' big four, from left - Karl Malone, Kobe Bryant, Gary Payton and Shaquille O'Neal - all have reasons to leave next season. But they'd all be crazy to depart with the team finally looking like a champion.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer