EL SEGUNDO Three months later, things aren't quite as rosy for the Lakers as they once appeared.

On Jan. 17, after a win at San Antonio, the Lakers were 26-13 and were portrayed as a team on the rise, perhaps one capable of rejoining the NBA elite just three seasons after breaking up the Kobe Bryant-Shaquille O'Neal axis that helped produce three straight championships.

But the rest of the season, the Lakers were just 16-27 and didn't clinch a payoff berth until their 81st game. As they open the playoffs Sunday at Phoenix, playing the team with the league's second best record, few expect anything but a quick postseason exit.

What went wrong? And is there any chance the Lakers can regain their former level?

The first question, at least, is easy to answer. Injuries derailed the Lakers, and they didn't have the depth to overcome them. At times, the injured list was so extensive that no team could realistically have expected to succeed.

As coach Phil Jackson recently noted, the Lakers' 26-13 start was built around a starting unit Bryant, Kwame Brown, Lamar Odom, Luke Walton and Smush Parker put together late last season, when the Lakers won 11 of their last 15 games, then pushed Phoenix to the brink of elimination before falling in the seventh game of their first-round playoff series.

But by the time of the win in San Antonio, that group was already disintegrating. Odom was injured on Dec. 12. Brown suffered an ankle injury on Dec. 31 against Philadelphia. And Walton went down with an ankle injury on Jan. 28.

The established starting five ended up being available for just 10 of the final 43 games. The Lakers won seven of those games, going 9-24 with various patchwork lineups. They'll apparently enter the playoffs with a starting lineup together for just two games, with Brown returning and Jordan Farmar replacing Parker as the point guard.

Still, Jackson says now continuity in the starting lineup isn't really the issue. It's more of a problem off the bench, where roles and minutes have yo-yoed while plugging the various injuries.

"I think we've got our five starters kind of in a position where they're conscious of what they have to do," he said. "It's our role players getting them that (time), whether it's eight minutes or 18 minutes, to play that backup role that really makes a difference that's important.

And that's where we've been messed up more than anything else."

But Jackson's decision to elevate Farmar, a rookie from UCLA, into a starting spot ending Parker's string of 162 consecutive starts indicates that all is still not well with the starting group, either.

"I'm trying to find out what the combination's going to be that gives us the best effort as a team," Jackson explained. "And it's funny to be fiddling with it still after 80 games, but that's what we have to do."

It was a change forced by defensive issues. The Lakers finished the regular season allowing 103.4 points per game, the sixth highest figure in the league. Last year, they allowed 96.9 points per game and ranked 16th.

Jackson pointed to play at the point (which is to say, Parker's deficiencies) and Brown's injury as the big issues.

"First of all, defense is the point guard puts the pressure on the ball," he said, "and the centers cover up the mistakes that the players make. We've had inconsistency in both places."

At 6-foot-11 and a muscular 270 pounds, Brown "gives us a post presence, and that's really important to have someone in there that can stop the charge of the teams, so they can't just turn and force the ball to the basket. In this game, it's all about power, and he's got the ability to hold guys out."

This is why Jackson applied a fair amount of public pressure to get Brown back in the lineup. ("If we don't have Kwame back, we're not going to win," he said at one point. "I mean, we're not going to go anywhere in the playoffs.") Brown ultimately returned for the final two regular-season games, but is still limited by the ankle in practice.

The degree to which he can play and be effective remains very much in question, and is likely to be one of the two keys to determining if the Lakers have a tiny chance against Phoenix, or no chance at all.

"You've got to go inside against them," said Walton, "and you've got to slow the game down. That's what we tried to do last year in the playoffs."

The other key, of course, will be Bryant, who had 10 games of 50 or more points in winning the regular-season scoring title, and will probably have to continue to carry the vast majority of the offensive burden during the playoffs.

"If the jump shot's not going," Bryant said, referring to his own shot, "we kind of struggle to get wins. So hopefully, we can free me up a little bit, and get some good looks, knock the ball down and see if we can't get in a good rhythm, and kind of play off that."

Said Walton, "Kobe's so much of our offense that if he struggles it's going to be harder, but it's not like we feel if Kobe has an off-night, we can't win. We feel that we played in ways before that Kobe's had off nights and we've won.

"It's just that lately, with the team struggling, he's been trying to (put) more of the scoring load on himself."

Still, while the team clearly has unresolved issues, Jackson likes his team's chances more now that Brown, in particular, has returned.

"He's the kind of player that we feel comfortable in screen rolls, the majority of stuff (the Suns) like to do against opponents. We feel like we've got a decisive player in that position who can step out and play.

"We're going to have to run the game at our pace, which is tough. That's the Suns' real strength, is that they can pace a game up to their speed."