All the talk in Tinseltown so far this season has been about the surprising first-place Clippers. But that shocking development shouldn’t obscure the progress being made by L.A.’s new “other” team, the Lakers. Believe it or not, basketball’s most over-hyped team has managed to sneak up on people. After a slow start, the Lake Show won five out of six on its just-completed Eastern road trip and now stands just two games behind those beloved Clips at 12-10.

The development is hard to fathom given a Laker roster with enough holes to fill a golf course. The starting point guard, native New Yorker Smush Parker, went undrafted out of Fordham and was cut by two teams last year. The starting center, Chris Mihm, is a veteran nomad of middling worth at best. And at power forward there’s Kwame Brown, who has been such a crushing disappointment that I already devoted a separate column to him a few weeks ago.

Yet through it all, the Lakers are winning, and not just squeaking by, either. On Wednesday night, they plastered Memphis – one of the West’s best teams – in Tennessee, no less. L.A. led by as many as 23 before calling off the dogs in an impressive 94-79 win.This came two nights after triumphing in Dallas, where the Mavs rarely falter. Overall, the Lakers are 7-2 in December.

The obvious question is: How have the Lakers managed to turn things around? It all starts with the Zen Master. Unlike another certain high-profile, title-winning coach who signed an enormous contract in a major media market,Phil Jackson has been worth every cent so far. In particular, he’s done exactly what we thought Larry Brown would do in New York: Make a poor defensive team into an excellent one.

Last season, the Lakers were the second-worst defensive team in the league based on my Defensive Efficiency rankings, which rate how many points a team gives up per 100 possessions. That’s changed dramatically. The Lakers’ Defensive Efficiency mark of 98.72 ranks seventh among the league’s 30 teams, allowing the Lakers to stay over .500 despite a mediocre offensive attack.In fact, this is a greatly misunderstood aspect of Big Chief Triangle’s legacy: His teams have traditionally been just as effective on defense as they have on offense.

In this case,Jackson appears to be doing it with rubber bands and duct tape. The Lakers’ two best players, Kobe Bryant and Lamar Odom, are more renowned for their offensive exploits than their defensive talents. Though each is a competent one-on-one defender, nobody will be comparing them to the Detroit Wallaces any time soon. Surrounding them are several suspect defenders. Mihm, though a decent shotblocker, can be pushed around in the paint; Brown is inattentive and mistakeprone; and Parker has concentration lapses and lacks experience.

Then there’s the bench, where more deficiencies crop up.Brian Cook,the top big man off the bench, is much more comfortable hanging out at the 3-point line than banging in the paint. In the backcourt, pencil-thin second-year pro Sasha Vujacic also offers little resistance. Of the second unit, only wingmen Devean George and Laron Profit are accomplished man-to-man defenders.

So this has been a triumph of scheme and psychology over talent. Jackson has cajoled Bryant and Odom into giving as much of themselves defensively as offensively, which wasn’t always the case last year. He’s also used his team’s size effectively as a defensive weapon. With Parker standing 6-foot-4, Bryant 6-foot-6, and either the 6-foot-8 George or 6-foot-10 Odom at small forward,few teams have a bigger trio on the wings. They get even bigger when Parker checks out,since he’s the shortest player on the roster (!) and normally is replaced by the 6-foot-7 Vujacic – another sign, by the way, of Jackson’s infamous loathing of short guards. This impressive size has made L.A. effective when playing zones or, more often, simply hanging back and waiting for opponents to try to shoot over them.

Jackson has been equally masterful at getting the most out of his limited crew at the offensive end. Parker, for instance, has washed out in several trials in part because he’s not a pure point guard. In Jackson’s triangle offense, where two guards share responsibility, that’s less of a problem – especially since the other guard, Bryant, dominates the ball so much. Instead, Parker’s main task is to defend opposing point guards, play passing lanes, and be ready to launch a 3-pointer if left open. He’s done well at those assignments, hitting 40.2% from downtown while averaging nearly two steals per game.

What’s put the Lakers over the top, however, has been Odom’s resurgence. He began the year in a bit of a funk, much like he ended the last one. The problem was that he’d been used at small forward since coming to L.A., after enjoying success at the power forward slot in Miami. Odom is a skillful ballhandler, so he’s capable of playing on the wing,but he’s only a so-so outside shooter and doesn’t have a great first step. Thus, when matched up against small forwards, he has trouble getting free for easy shots and misses a lot of long jumpers. As a power forward, on the other hand, he’s a matchup nightmare, because he can easily take bigger players off the dribble.

Jackson realized Odom needed to play in the frontcourt at the start of the road trip, helping to fuel L.A.’s recent streak. Not surprisingly, Odom put together six straight games in which he made more than half his shots, hitting a scalding 63.1% on the trip. Meanwhile, his 3-point attempts were because he spent more of his team breezing to the rim.

Taken together, it’s starting to look like a playoff package. Add in Odom’s resurgence to a defensive revival and the expected superb play from Bryant – including a spectacular fadeaway 3-pointer as the shot clock dwindled to stun Dallas on Monday – and the Lakers are a serious threat in a Pacific Division weakened by Amare Stoudemire’s injury and Sacramento’s demise.

On paper, that’s a hard premise to believe. L.A. only has four players averaging more than seven points a game, for instance,and there isn’t a dominant post player to be found. Yet thanks to their well-compensated new coach, the Lakers have become greater than the sum of their parts. One can only hope that, at some point this year, the Knicks experience the same phenomenon.

Mr. Hollinger is the author of the 2005-06 Pro Basketball Forecast. He can be reached at jhollinger@nysun.com.