Philadelphia ? The age of reason in sports, we are being told, is upon us at long last.

Fiscal sanity has arrived, no more evident than tomorrow when Gary Payton and Karl Malone, two old NBA warhorses near trail’s end, are due to pledge their remaining roundball allegiance to the Los Angeles Lakers.

They will be doing this, we are assured, at great financial sacrifice. They so desperately desire the one fulfillment that has eluded them, which is to say jewelry, that they are willing, eager even, to accept drastic reductions in pay, and isn’t that refreshing and wonderful?

Imagine, pro athletes taking less, not more. If only it were a trend. But to be charitable and diplomatic, there is only one response to this: Bovine excrement.

A cut in pay is in the eye, or wallet, of the beholder.

Ask a laborer on the brink of being laid off what a cut in pay means. You may recall that when the NBA was embroiled in a lockout a few years back, one player moaned that times were so tough that he was probably going to have to sell one of his cars. That would have left him, as I remember, with only six. Belt tightening, indeed.

The point is, if you already have $50 million socked away, then allowing yourself to be passed off as agreeing to huge hardship is self-serving and hypocritical.

You make enough, you can afford a “cut,” though it is well to remember that their new contracts, while less than what they are accustomed to, will still have commas and zeroes flapping along behind like the tail of a kite.

The choice used to be: Money or ring? Well, unless you were Michael Jordan. Then you got both every year. Now, under the right conditions, it is possible to have both.

It is presumed that the Lakers have bought themselves a championship, having found a convenient loophole in the salary cap to wiggle through, and having found two players who can afford to hire out on the cheap because they do not want to leave the game without a championship, and never mind if it is achieved by playing with what amounts to a stacked deck.

Malone and Payton aligned with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant? Four Hall of Fame players on the same squad at the same time? Hardly seems fair, does it?

Their yearning for a title is understandable. It is universal in sports that no career is viewed as complete unless you have been hosed down with of champagne in a riotous locker room.

We have convinced ourselves that an individual career without a team title is somehow lacking.

Certainly Malone and Payton are entitled to try for the ring. They have put in their time.

But there are no guarantees. And titles cannot always be bought. History is replete with examples of teams that were presumed to be unbeatable but turned out to be not, usually to the great delight of the majority of us.

So the Lakers, their run stopped this year at three titles in a row, have loaded up.

What stands between the Lakers and a cakewalk is the most basic of mathematical equations in basketball. It is division: Can you make five go into one?

Five players, one ball. More to the point: Four egos, one ball. Four outsized egos, one ball.

After all those years of being the main name on the marquee, can they throttle back and coexist? After all those years of being catered to, can they share? Can they pass the kindergarten test, which is to ask: Can they play well with others?

That will be the true test. Not the money.