ROGERS SHOWS HE'S A WINNER.

Byline: Karen Crouse

Go ahead and laugh at Phoenix's chances of finishing off the Lakers. Rodney Rogers is inured to your scoffing, your sneering, your scorn.

After putting in four years with the Clippers, he is immune to every strain of sarcasm. So feel free to say the Suns won't win a quarter against the Lakers, much less a game and certainly not their Western Conference semifinal best-of-seven series.

Rogers will shrug it off because your words can't hurt him. Not like all that losing did in bygone seasons. If you really want to know the truth, the 205 losses in four years was what was killing him.

A 28-point loss like the one the Suns suffered Sunday might look bad to you. But at least it came in the second week of May, in the second round of a playoff series. Rogers will rub out from his jersey Shaquille O'Neal's sneaker marks and come back more determined than ever in Wednesday's Game 2, you can count on it.

Because Rogers is not a loser. He just played for one in L.A.

He realizes most people fail to make such a distinction. Truth to tell, his own perception had become horribly blurred by the time the Suns stepped in and signed him to a free-agent contract last August.

Saved him, really.

Same as someone will snatch from the jaws of Donald Sterling forward Maurice Taylor this summer and Lamar Odom a few summers from now.

Lamond Murray went from the Clippers to Cleveland and became the Cavaliers' second-leading scorer this season. Rogers went from worthless to the league's most valuable sixth man.

It's not a coincidence.

``Things never change there,'' Rogers said, referring to Clipperville, the closest thing the NBA has to Siberia.

Things will never change there, Rogers insinuated, as long as Sterling remains the owner. For the exodus of skilled-turned-sullen players to stop, ``the league is going to have to force Sterling into selling the team,'' Rogers said.

Until that happens, you can bet that what the Clippers lack in wins they'll continue to more than make up for in players who leave L.A., then write Hollywood endings to their careers.

Why? Because to win, ``you have to have your sanity,'' Rogers said.

His comeback story began over the summer, when he submitted himself to a rigorous conditioning regimen.

If he was going to lose the reputation he had acquired with the Clippers as a malcontent, Rogers realized he needed to shed a few pounds and firm up his attitude. Mentally, he really let himself go during last year's lockout-shortened season.

In between pouting, Rogers played an average of 20 minutes a night, well below his 32.9 of the season before. He averaged 7.4 points, the fewest of his seven-year NBA career.

``When you're losing, a lot of things happen,'' Rogers said. ``You get very frustrated. Sometimes you get a temper, those sorts of things. When I came (to Phoenix) I had to kind of change my whole attitude. I had a lot of bad habits coming into this season, having played with losing teams. I had to change that mentality.

``I came in and and tried to show that I'm a hard worker, and I just wanted to play.''

After rotting not far from Hollywood and Vine, Rogers didn't need to be a star. He was perfectly content to be part of the Suns' supporting cast.

``All I wanted to do was be a winner and not lose all the time,'' Rogers said.

He appeared in all 82 games - all but seven as a reserve - and averaged 13.8 points. He shot 43.9 percent from beyond the 3-point arc to nicely complement the Spurs' slash-happy backcourt of Jason Kidd and Penny Hardaway.

The one team that gave him trouble was - you guessed it - the Lakers (must be some curse left over from his Clippers days). In four games, Rogers made only four of 18 3-pointers. He was 0 for 5 from beyond the arc in Sunday's 105-77 defeat on his way to a very quiet seven points in 29 minutes.

If the Suns are going to put any heat on the Lakers, Rogers, 28, needs to cause more commotion than that.

All season long, he has drawn plenty of notice. Wherever the Suns played, people would come up to Rogers and welcome him back, as though he had spent the past four years in exile.

OK, so he had in a manner of speaking. Whatever, it was nice to have his peers pat him on the backside and say, ``It's good to see you get back on track.''

Rogers shudders when he thinks how close he came to walking away from basketball last year. He gave serious consideration to cutting his losses, to finding some other line of work that wasn't so dehumanizing.

Rogers owns a business with seven dump trucks, and after four years with the Clippers, hauling dirt and gravel was looking like a mighty attractive alternative to the NBA.

``I thought that way plenty of times,'' Rogers said.

Cliff Robinson, who was eavesdropping on the interview from his cubicle next to where Rogers was sitting in the visitors' locker room at Staples Center, looked at his teammate quizzically.

``Give up? Really?'' Robinson said, softly.

``I was,'' Rogers said, looking Robinson in the eye. ``Seriously.''

You can go ahead and think Rogers feels great, being back here in L.A., playing in the Clippers' building, dancing on his former team's grave.

But you'd be dead wrong.

``It's a terrible feeling to see that everyone who leaves the Clippers goes somewhere else and ends up playing better and accomplishing something,'' Rogers said. ``It's kind of sad.''

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Photo: (color) RODNEY ROGERS

``When you're losing, a lot of things happen,'' the ex-Clipper said. ``You get very frustrated. Sometimes you get a temper, those sorts of things. . . .''