A CHANGE OF PACE

Once you pull the sword from the stone, and receive the bows, bouquets and sizings for the crown, isn’t everything else an encore?

Once you produce the greatest playoff comeback, perhaps ever, against the team perfectly assembled to destroy you, what’s so dramatic about aiming for four more victories, even if it’s for the NBA championship against the Indiana Pacers?

It feels like summer school, but these are the NBA finals starting here tonight.

“We’re just kind of riding it out,” Kobe Bryant said Tuesday, asked if he’s still feeling tingles from the Lakers’ Game 7 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers on Sunday.

“We’re still up. Our confidence is pretty high. And it should be. We’re excited, and we should be.

“By the same token, we have a lot of work to do, and we have to get prepared.”

Once Sunday happened, once the Lakers rushed past the Trail Blazers in the largest fourth-quarter comeback in Game 7 history . . . once the tension headaches subsided and the voices were regained, how do you put the Kazaam back in the bottle?

Forgive the Lakers--and the citizens of this woozy city--if they feel already semi-regal these days, relaxed and ready for the first Laker championship parade since 1988.

Because whatever the Eastern Conference champion Pacers bring to this series, it will be almost impossible to duplicate what the Lakers went through with Sacramento, Phoenix and Portland, and still lived to hug about it.

“We hope they’re overlooking us,” Indiana guard Reggie Miller said Tuesday. “We’re not coming in here to lay down.

“We’re coming in here to shock the world.”

Laker Coach Phil Jackson made one stark statistical point to his team Tuesday:

The last half-decade is littered with teams that struggled to seven-game playoff victories, then immediately lost the first game of the next round, on their way to an eventual series defeat.

In fact, dating to 1995, the last seven teams that won Game 7 showdowns lost the following Game 1; and only one of those teams pulled out a series victory in the round after a seven-game battle.

That one team? In 1998, the Chicago Bulls, who battled the--surprise!--Larry Bird-coached, Miller-led Indiana Pacers to a Game 7 victory, lost Game 1 in the NBA finals to Utah, but won four of the next five games to win the sixth and last Bull title.

“I think it’s only normal or natural to be worried about the fact that you expended so much energy and emotion in a series, that there’d be a letdown,” Jackson said.

“But we feel like it might be a momentum boost for us too. You can’t tell. This Laker team is a very interesting team that way.

“We’re a little skittish, but I think we have some momentum going into this thing.”

Shaquille O’Neal’s 1995 Orlando Magic team outlasted the (surprise, again) Pacers in seven games, then wobbled into the NBA finals against the Houston Rockets, and were promptly swept in what was O’Neal’s only previous trip to the ultimate round.

“We just kind of lost focus [in 1995], messing around, joking around,” O’Neal said. “But [this time,] we had a half-a-day of celebrating and now it’s get down to business.”

Forward Robert Horry, a member of that 1995 Rocket team, said there should be no Game 7 hangover.

“People say, ‘Oh, they’re going to be tired,’ ” Horry said. “We’ve been doing this for 82 games. We had a day off, then we had a day of practice.

“If everybody can’t recuperate in 48 hours, you need to go see the doctor.”

The Pacers, meanwhile, had the best regular-season record in the East, survived their blue-collar battle in the conference finals, a six-game slugfest with their nemesis, the New York Knicks, to reach the NBA finals for the first time in franchise history.

So, with Bird ready to step down, with a handful of key free agents (including Miller and No. 2-scorer Jalen Rose), they figure they have some proud bruises to show off too.

Back in January, Indiana wiped out the Lakers’ 16-game winning streak with a big fourth-quarter rush at Conseco Fieldhouse, keyed by reserves Travis Best and Austin Croshere, one of only three Laker losses (in 30 games) to Eastern Conference opponents.

Of course, the Lakers turned around a few weeks later and crushed Indiana at Staples Center.

“We have a tremendous amount of respect for Indiana, because they’re such a smart team and they play hard,” Bryant said.

“Larry Bird’s going to have his guys ready to play. And they’re not going to come in here ready to hand us two games and hand us the trophy. They’re going to be ready to fight.”

For Bird, whose last appearance in the finals was as a Boston Celtic player against the Magic Johnson-led Lakers in 1987, this series must be about standing up to the challenges the Lakers present.

“Obviously, we’ll have to play better than we have,” Bird said. “We’ve had some awful good games throughout each series, but we really haven’t played as well as we’re capable of playing.

“We’re going to have to shoot the ball a lot better, we’re going to have to lay it on the line. They’ve got a lot of weapons. They’re big, they’re powerful.

“We’re going to have to play. And if we play, we’ve got a great shot at winning it.”

What Indiana does not have, however, is the same ability as Portland to strangle the lanes to O’Neal, which has proven to be the quickest way to make the Lakers very mortal in the postseason.

“I think it took a whole season to find any chinks in their armor,” Miller said. “They played fabulous throughout the regular season.”

And now the Lakers, still tingling, begin the last journey.

“This is not somewhere I pause and say, ‘It’s great to be here,’ ” Jackson said. “It’s about winning the finals, that’s why we’re here.

“No one remembers who came in second in a championship unless you’re a basketball aficionado or a reporter. So my job is specifically to help this team get prepared for this series.

“A lot of people downplay the ability of Indiana. I think they’re going to give us a very good series.”

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SCHEDULE

Best-of-seven series

* Tonight: at Staples, 6

* Friday: at Staples, 6 p.m.

* Sunday: at Indiana, 4:30 p.m.

* June 14: at Indiana, 6 p.m.

* June 16: at Indiana, 6 p.m.-x

* June 19: at Staples, 6 p.m.-x

* June 21: at Staples, 6 p.m.-x

x-if necessary. All times Pacific.

All games on Channel 4