Boston — Anyone assuming Mike Bibby's head would hang after one awful game hasn't watched the point guard the past decade.

Big moments, whether he's the hero or the goat, don't frighten him.

Elsa/Staff (ENLARGE)

Rajon Rondo (left) and the Celtics pestered Hawks' guard Mike Bibby into a poor performance in Game 1.

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In Game 1 of the Hawks' first-round Eastern Conference playoff series Sunday night, Bibby was definitely the goat. He shot a miserable 2-for-10 from the floor and scored just five points as the Hawks were blown out 104-81 by Boston.

Bibby was also outplayed in a head-to-head matchup with Celtics second-year point guard Rajon Rondo. However, he was back at work Monday, on that same floor, eager to stare down his recent past and embrace the next challenge.

"Look, it happens," Bibby said. "You bounce back next game and make sure it doesn't happen again. It was the first playoff game for a lot of these guys and it's a different game out there. But like I said [Sunday] night, I take the blame for that game. I didn't get the team involved. I didn't push the ball. I wasn't aggressive myself. I was too passive and it hurt us."

Bibby is a huge reason the Hawks are in the playoffs. His arrival in a trade deadline deal with Sacramento changed the Hawks' season. They went from averaging 94.8 points per game before his arrival to 103.5 over the last 33 regular-season games. The marked offensive improvement helped fuel the Hawks' surge to their first playoff appearance in nine years.

"You have the utmost confidence in a player like Mike because of what he's done and how he's done it," teammat Josh Childress said. "Not only has he done it in the NBA, he was an assassin in college. Everybody knows that. And we certainly knew that before the trade. That's why we were juiced up when we knew he was coming our way."

It was Bibby who finally gained the trust of Hawks coach Mike Woodson, the first point guard to do so in Woodson's four-year tenure. So much so that Woodson allowed him to change plays and even do the talking during timeouts when Bibby felt it necessary.

Yet none of that mattered Sunday. Bibby couldn't even get the Hawks into their offensive sets against the Celtics' swarming defense. Woodson said the coaching staff charted 32 possessions in which the Hawks didn't get in an offensive set. Much of the reason was the result of Bibby not taking control.

"He just wasn't aggressive," Woodson said. "And he had some good looks, just like Joe [Johnson] and Marvin [Williams], and we just didn't make shots.

"Really, for the first time since we've had Bibby, we had four guys in the starting lineup that just didn't play their game. We hadn't seen that. I know I hadn't seen that. And when you have four of your starters go 14-for-49 from the floor, that's not going to cut it.

"We just have to clean up our offense and get guys making shots and then we can see what'll happen. But it starts with Bibby. He has to take control out there."

Bibby's playoff past suggested that he'd do exactly that for the Hawks. He drove Sacramento to the cusp of the NBA Finals at the end of the 2001-02 season. The run was ended in a Game 7 loss to the Shaquille O'Neal-Kobe Bryant-led Los Angeles Lakers, the eventual champions.

To see the veteran of 52 playoff games finish with five points, two turnovers and just one assist didn't fit Bibby's basketball résumé.

"It's not just on Mike," Johnson said. "It's on me, too. We're the only guys on the team with any [playoff] experience. So I'm not going to let him take that heat alone. We've both got to bounce back, somehow and some way, and get these guys ready to go for Game 2."

That's where Bibby's focus was Monday, solely on Wednesday's Game 2. He can't go back and make any of the shots he missed Sunday. He can concentrate on not repeating the errors. He says he won't be as tentative.

"It's one game," Bibby said. "You have to take the good with the bad and move on."