THE ABSENT PROFESSOR

Jerry West, serving as prophet, pawn and executor of his own tortured vision, saw this coming. Before anyone else, he had to see it.

Now, it’s all that he sees.

“Blame me,” West said breezily (and you would assume, not seriously) Wednesday, as he bumped into a few reporters at the Great Western Forum in one of his rare media interchanges since the tempest began.

The executive vice president had a wan smile on his face that belied a Laker campaign of almost total anguish, that betrayed almost none of his struggles with owner Jerry Buss or the stunningly dismal returns of his much-considered trade for Glen Rice.

Or even his recent repeated claims to friends and associates that, yes, he definitely is set to quit the Lakers, that this time Buss’ quirks and irrational requests have driven him totally off the reservation.

Of course, West has said these things before, and to the Lakers’ good fortune, never quit, remaining the single bonding force that makes the Lakers different from and better than almost every other franchise in sports.

As a reward, last summer he received a four-year, $14-million-plus contract extension that doesn’t start until next season.

But that’s next season. He is telling friends he will never collect a cent from the deal.

Now? He seems to be in a nether world--neither totally engaged in running the team, nor totally out of it, apparently popping in and out as his moods--and his frustrations with Buss’ meddling--sway him.

And by taking that physical and spiritual leave from the Lakers, West has tossed the entire, fragile franchise into tumult and opened everything--personnel, player rivalries, coaching changes, front-office maneuvering--to the kind of second-guessing no one has dared to do before with the Lakers.

Is he the unquestioned leader of the Lakers? Or is he finally sick and tired of Buss and on his way out? One or the other--the future of the Lakers rests on the answer.

The team cannot go long without knowing; having only a piece of Jerry West, having him by title but not by soul . . . well, you have seen the result so far.

“It’s easy,” West said, “just blame me. Isn’t that what your job is, to assign blame for what the players do? So blame me.”

But wasn’t it you who put this team together? he was asked.

“That’s what I said,” West continued, still smiling. “Blame me.”

Then West departed, and continued to decline requests for a formal interview on this wayward season, saying he preferred to save a public analysis for after the season.

But he already has made his thoughts clear. He did that at the beginning of this season, before the darkness fell.

“I don’t understand why we’d want to add a lot of people, myself,” West said on the first day of training camp, back when they had Eddie Jones and Elden Campbell, when Del Harris was their coach, and neither Dennis Rodman nor Rice had ever put on a Laker jersey.

“We like what we have. My goodness, if we don’t like this, we better all get out of the business.”

In a movie, flashbacks that portentous come with a jarring soundtrack and a slow fade to black.

With pure motives and the desire to deliver Buss a title immediately, as demanded, West did not heed his own advice.

Though he saw the dangers, West probably thought he could steer away from them, and he is probably the only man in the NBA who could have, if everything broke right. But it did not, and instead the chaos began:

* West urged a final decision on Harris this summer, either fired or his contract extended, to avoid a lame-duck situation--which Buss ignored.

* After a 6-6 start, West argued for the firing of Harris and the elevation of Kurt Rambis--which he got, right when the Lakers most needed an experienced hand running the show.

* He protested the signing of Dennis Rodman, especially when the non-negotiations dragged out over two weeks, but not enough to prevent it--or even to insist that Buss not do it.

* As Rodman proved incapable of even the most liberal interpretation of fitting in with his teammates, West--the one man Rodman respected in the organization--was nowhere to be seen, furious with Buss and furious with himself for not standing more forthrightly in the way of such a time bomb.

As West sulked in protest and in anger away from the Laker scene (he has not been visible at a Laker game since mid-March), it was left to a rookie coach to go crazy trying to deal with Rodman, and even after Rodman was released, General Manager Mitch Kupchak had to explain it.

* He has left Rambis to scramble around in limbo as the Lakers have dissolved.

While it now seems probable that Rambis will not be asked to return and that the Lakers might go after a veteran such as Phil Jackson or, if he springs loose from Orlando, Chuck Daly, whom has Rambis been able to lean on for public and private support amid the crises?

Last season, as speculation about Harris’ status flew, West wrote a letter to the team, urging the players to bind together or else see the season slip away. The Lakers finished the season on a 22-3 roll, won 61 games and made it to the conference finals.

* West’s absence allowed the Shaquille O’Neal/Kobe Bryant personality clash develop from a casual sideshow into an actual issue, to where O’Neal’s asides about Bryant’s wild play and being overly indulged might have a lasting effect.

The players themselves say there’s no reason to be alarmed by the back-and-forth. “If we saw that Kobe didn’t pass it to Shaq, or that Shaq won’t set screens for Kobe, then we’d have to step in and say something, but that’s not the case at all,” Derek Fisher said.

Bryant continues to brush off the media’s interest in their relationship, calling it “only entertainment for you all,” and saying all that matters is that they are fine on the court together.

Bryant said neither he nor O’Neal has talked about their problems, or, for that matter, felt the need to.

But Bryant’s associates say that O’Neal’s words have hurt Bryant, even if he is strong enough to accept them and move on.

* West dangled Jones and Campbell as trade bait but grew leery of Rice when Rice said the Lakers wouldn’t be his prime choice and suggested it would take a $60-million contract extension to make him happy.

* Then, eager to get rid of Campbell’s salary, and prodded by his own emotions (he was upset that Jones pouted amid the trade talk), West swung the hammer that knocked the Lakers loose from their bearings.

He refused Milwaukee’s offer of point guard Terrell Brandon for Campbell (and Fisher) so he could package Jones and Campbell for Rice, in part, because O’Neal had been so loudly demanding a shooter.

Instead of becoming the Lakers’ missing link, Rice, as West guessed at when he hesitated to make the deal, has accentuated the Lakers’ existing weaknesses, forced Bryant to move from small forward (where he was flourishing) to shooting guard (where he has not) and provided very little offensive firepower in return.

The truth is, Rick Fox, last year’s starter, probably could provide more things--defense, offensive balance, leadership--for the Lakers as a starter.

While he is no question an extremely dangerous scorer and a very valuable NBA commodity, Rice is a shadow of his former all-star self, and the Lakers are 12-13 since the trade.

Rice doesn’t play transition defense; Jones was by far the Lakers’ best shield against wild fastbreaks. Rice needs help defending his man; Jones not only handled his man, but played the passing lanes brilliantly.

Rice urged the Lakers to retool their offensive scheme to get him the ball in better rhythm; Jones was content to let the offense revolve around O’Neal and Bryant, and fill in the gaps.

Rice has a history of being unhappy if he feels he is underpaid, and the Lakers have no intention of paying him $12 million or more per season to keep him around, which certainly could develop into a huge problem.

To associates, West now is proffering this defense for the Rice acquisition: Buss made me do it.

But Buss only wanted to get rid of Campbell. It was West who decided that Jones, signed through next season, would be too expensive to keep around for the long term and that Rice was the best option.

It was West who gave up his last great tradable assets--Jones and, to a lesser extent, Campbell--and in return, shored up neither of the Lakers’ need areas, power forward or point guard.

Was it all West’s fault? Of course not. And nobody can avoid mistakes here and there.

But the Lakers are used to West navigating them out of the worst errors and leading them by personality, pride and intellect.

By constructing a trade that looked fine on paper but had reams of miscalculated logic behind it, by vanishing from public view when his players and his rookie coach needed something to hold them together, by remaining undecided when his owner interfered most flagrantly, West made his own nightmare come true.

And he probably knows that now.