SPURS INSIDE LOOK: PARKER ENDS UP GETTING FRENCH FRIED BY LAKERS.

Byline: Billy Witz Staff Writer

It was just over a week ago that the San Antonio Spurs had won 17 games in a row and appeared on the way to their second consecutive NBA championship.

Now, they're gone.

As the Spurs wonder what happened, a good place to start the summer of introspection might be their young French point guard Tony Parker. Just like the Spurs, in the blink of an eye he went from ooh, la, la to au revoir.

After carving up the Lakers in the first two games of the series, Parker, 21, soon became mortal and by the end of the series he was just plain miserable.

He missed his last 10 shots in Saturday night's 88-76 series-ending loss and finished Game 6 with a butterfly bandage on his chin for good measure.

``It's hard,'' Parker said after taking seven stitches to close the gash he got from a collision with Derek Fisher. ``It's going to be a long summer for me to try to understand what happened.''

When the Spurs took a 2-0 lead in the series, it seemed like such folly that last summer they pursued free agent Jason Kidd to play Parker's position.

Parker's quickness confounded the Lakers just as it had Memphis in a first-round sweep. If Parker wasn't making Gary Payton look like a senior citizen he was making a fool of Devean George with a crossover dribble that left George stumbling one way while Parker flew the other.

In the two victories, Parker lit up the Lakers for an average of 25 points per game and shot 50 percent from the field.

The Lakers, always uncomfortable defending pick-and-rolls,have struggling with quick guards in the Western Conference (Mike Bibby, Steve Francis and Parker). They had long viewed Parker as an annoyance. After two games, he was looking like more than that - their ticket out of the playoffs.

When they've needed to adjust in the past, it was usually a matter of turning Kobe Bryant loose on the nuisance.

This time the Lakers altered their defense, figuring if they couldn't keep up with Parker they would at least force him to navigate more traffic. They put a few more pylons in the lane by collapsing their defense from the wings.

Voila

In the four games since, Parker has averaged 12.3 points and shot just 31 percent. In Game 6, he made just four of 18 shots - including three airballs - and had six turnovers.

``He's 21 years old, so there is going to be some inconsistency, so I have to be patient with that,'' Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. ``He is not going to play like a 32-year-old veteran every night. He has a lot of heart, he is a competitive young man, he is going to have a great career and he is going to be a wonderful player for us as the years go by. But he has been inconsistent.''

Parker attributed his struggles less to the Lakers' defense than to his inability to put the ball in the basket.

``They did nothing special,'' Parker said. ``I just missed wide-open shots.''

Whether the Spurs re-tool around Parker and Tim Duncan again is unclear - Duncan advocated it - but at least one player will return determined.

``This is the first time (I've had) a bad loss,'' Parker said. ``I owe my teammates and the city of San Antonio. Next year we will have a lot of motivation. I know I will.''

Billy Witz, [phone]

billy.witz(at)dailynews.com

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After playing such a dominant role for the Spurs, Tony Parker was reduced to an average player.

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer