The Suns worked extremely hard to establish themselves as the No. 2 seed in the West. They almost saw it go down the sewer pipes. Now that they have weathered that onslaught from the upstart Lakers, they have to be experiencing renewed confidence. They have to believe that they have the ingredients to be a contender for the NBA Finals.

Of course, they can’t get too carried away. They have to maintain some perspective. These were the 2005-06 Lakers they defeated, not the 1984-85 Lakers. The defensive strategy for these Lakers apparently was to let the Suns have layups and hope they missed them. Their defense was pathetically porous. It’s a good thing they’re not guarding our ports.

When these Lakers appeared in the playoffs this year — the ones with castoffs Smush Parker and Kwame Brown in the starting lineup — it was the basketball equivalent of villagers in South America seeing an image of the Madonna on the wall of a building. It was hard to process mentally, and bordered on the supernatural.

The Suns should probably have swept this series. Instead, early on they allowed the Lakers to dictate the tempo. A slow pace is the Suns’ Achilles’ heel. Fortunately for the Suns, the heel eventually healed.

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Now comes the Clippers. Basketball pundits never thought they’d say these words, but the Clippers are a force to be reckoned with. They’re the anti-Lakers in the sense that they’re balanced and relatively consistent. Even though they have a star in Elton Brand, they don’t rely on one man like the Lakers do with Kobe. They have a dazzling array of possibilities on offense, including Brand, Sam Cassell, Cuttino Mobley, Shaun Livingston, Corey Maggette and Chris Kaman.

They also play defense. They’re not anything like the Spurs or Pistons, but they’re not nearly as dopey and disoriented as the Lakers often appeared to be in the first round.

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That doesn’t mean the games will be in the 80s. The Suns and Clips split the season series, and all four games were high-scoring affairs. That’s the key, though. Whereas the Lakers were hard-pressed to match the Suns’ production when the games became shootouts, the Clippers have the weaponry to stay even with Phoenix. The Suns still will have the advantage if the tempo is rat-a-tat, but at least the Clippers know they won’t have to dive into a bunker until the fireworks are over, like the Lakers did for the entire Game 7 Saturday night.

The Suns set their alarm and woke up just in time to go to work for real.

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