SPURS INSIDE LOOK: PARKER ENDS UP GETTING FRENCH FRIED.

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, 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 was just plain miserable. He missed his last ten shots in Saturday night's 88-76 series-clinching loss and ended Game 6 with a butterfly bandage on his chin for good measure.

When the Spurs took a 2-0 lead in the series, the catalyst was Parker, whose 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.

It seemed like such folly that last summer the Spurs, after winning a title with the young but still learning Parker, made a play for then-free agent Jason Kidd.

The Spurs retooled last summer and struggled early as the new parts struggled to fit in with Duncan and Parker, their keystones. But by the end of the season the Spurs were rolling - and right over the Lakers, it appeared.

The Lakers, always uncomfortable defending pick-and-rolls - struggling with the quick guards in the West (Mike Bibby, Steve Francis, Parker), had viewed it as an annoyance. After two games, it 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 4 of 18 shots - including three airballs and six turnovers.

Instead of playing to his strengths of getting to the basket and shooting on the move, the Lakers turned Parker into a stand-still jump shooter and turned him timid in the lane.

In a third-quarter sequence, Parker was fed a pass from Duncan and missed an open 20-footer. The Spurs gathered the rebound and Parker drove the lane, but he was stuck under the basket and his path was blocked by Shaquille O'Neal. Parker whipped a crosscourt pass to the corner to ... nobody.

Parker then went more than 10 minutes before attempting a shot.

Billy Witz, [phone]

billy.witz(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

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

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer