RILEY TRIES AGAIN TO PROVE HE'S MORE THAN ONE-TRICK PONY.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Pat Riley slipped back into his coaching suit on Monday, taking over from Stan Van Gundy on the Miami Heat bench, and do you know who should be grinning about this none-too-surprising news?

The Lakers and their fans should be grinning, that's who.

Not because Pat Riley's move from the Heat front office to the Heat sideline will help the Lakers' rebuilding effort in any way.

The closest thing to a tangible effect on the Lakers is that, with the renewal of the Riley-Phil Jackson rivalry stacked on top of Shaquille O'Neal-Kobe Bryant, TV ratings will jump a point or two for the Lakers-Heat game in Miami on Christmas Day.

No, the reason the Lakers and their fans should be smiling today has more to do with the team's past than its present or future.

What we're witnessing, as Riley steps in after Van Gundy's, uh, resignation, is the rebirth of the old Lakers coach's so-far-in-vain quest to recapture what he had in Los Angeles.

Riley tried it in New York, coaching the Knicks for four years, reaching the NBA Finals in 1994 before falling to the Houston Rockets in seven games. He tried it again in Miami, coaching the Heat for eight years, never getting farther than the Eastern Conference finals, before bumping himself upstairs in 2003. Now he tries it again with the Heat, completing a long-expected return to coaching after Van Gundy quit Monday.

Riley coached the Lakers to four NBA championships in nine seasons, starting with his very first season in 1981-82, before his motivational formula lost its fizz.

Trying ever since to prove he wasn't just riding the purple-and-gold coattails of Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, he has coached the Knicks and Heat to notable improvement but - bottom line - zero titles in a dozen seasons.

What with all the pain the Lakers and their fans have endured the past couple of years, you have to seize on such a point of pride.

Riley is merely the best dressed of the pro-basketball types who have spent the rest of their careers yearning for those once-upon-a-time years in L.A.

By my count, there are five contributors to Lakers championships who are still with the Lakers as players, as head coach or as general manager - Kobe Bryant, Devean George, Slava Medvedenko (``contributors'' is defined loosely here), Jackson and Mitch Kupchak.

There are almost twice as many contributors to Lakers championships who have been active with other teams this season - O'Neal, Robert Horry, Lindsey Hunter, Derek Fisher, Tyronn Lue, Mark Madsen, Samaki Walker, Riley and Jerry West.

Horry and Hunter have played small roles with NBA title winners since leaving the Lakers; Horry with the San Antonio Spurs last spring and Hunter with the Detroit Pistons the spring before. The other seven are still trying.

Add them all together, and the nine have won 23 championship rings in 53 man-seasons in L.A. They've won two in 30 since.

Now, obviously, Mark Madsen doesn't think of his work with the Minnesota Timberwolves as a personal quest to prove he was more than a cog in the Lakers machine. He knows he was a cog. He's proud of his coggitude.

It's different with Riley and O'Neal, the coach of a Lakers dynasty and the center of a Lakers near-dynasty. Each is desperate to win somewhere else.

Van Gundy insists Riley didn't push him out of the coach's chair. But everything else says Monday's development wasn't entirely about Van Gundy's stated wish to spend more time with his wife and teenage children.

Before a victory over Washington on Sunday, the Heat was 10-10, same as the Lakers, embarrassingly enough. Shaq returned Sunday from 18 games on the injury list, and he has made no secret of his wish to play for Riley.

Beginning with the Heat's game at Chicago tonight, they combine to form the most dangerous threat yet to the notion that Lakers glory doesn't travel.

I guess what I'm saying is that nobody had to twist Riley's silk-sleeved arm to get him, at age 60, to coach again.

``I think,'' Magic Johnson said at the Lakers' game in Dallas on Monday, ``that with Phil coming back and Larry (Brown) in the game (with the New York Knicks), he probably feels good about being back himself.''

The Dec. 25 Heat-Lakers game now shapes up as the real War on Christmas. It's Riley-O'Neal vs. Jackson-Bryant in a battle of second acts.

Jackson and Bryant are the lucky ones. They're trying to show there's life after a Lakers powerhouse, and they get to do it in Los Angeles.