Charlotte —- The final dagger came 12 minutes early for the Hawks on Friday.

From Matt Carroll's fingertips and through the bottom of the net at the end of the third quarter, the Hawks' chances of reviving their season took another dangerous turn in the wrong direction.

Faced with a golden opportunity to not only make a statement about themselves but also their playoff intentions during the final quarter of the season, the Hawks came up empty in a season-crunching 108-93 loss to the Charlotte Bobcats.

Outworked every inch of the way by a smarter, more aggressive, more physical and better-shooting Bobcats team, the Hawks' flickering postseason hopes are fading by the minute.

Tonight's doubleheader against another Southeast Division foe, Miami, looms as the Hawks' next Waterloo. They'll have to replay the 51.9 seconds of overtime from a Dec. 19 game marred by an official scorer's error but also a regularly scheduled game 15 minutes after the conclusion of that first game.

If they can't muster any more for the Heat than they did for the Bobcats, a fifth and sixth consecutive loss could very well be on the books before midnight.

"In the NBA you have to have three gears," Hawks All-Star and captain Joe Johnson said. "You have to have one gear for the preseason, another one for the regular season and then another one for the playoffs. We're still stuck in preseason gear. We don't have but two guys on this team that have played in the playoffs. So we've got guys who don't understand the significance of playing hard this time of year and what that means.

"And we just don't respect people around this league. Two quarters won't get it. You have to play four quarters, 48 minutes. And until we do, this thing will be over on April 16 [the last game of the regular season]. That's the truth. I'm not going to lie to anybody in here."

Carroll's 3-pointer at the third-quarter buzzer was the first sign that the Hawks were headed for a hard fall. But things really came unraveled as the fourth quarter went on.

Carroll continued to make uncontested 3-pointers, and Raymond Felton and Jared Dudley joined in the fun, too. Midway through the fourth quarter, with the game already well in hand, the Bobcats toyed with the Hawks, who stumbled their way to yet another deflating performance.

The Bobcats' rally from a 10-point deficit in the first half was a group effort, a charge no doubt sparked by Felton's furious finish to the first half. The Hawks' futile attempt to stay in the game, however, devolved into a discombobulated one-on-one affair, with each player's vain effort to fix things on his own only making them worse.

"This is the story of our season," Marvin Williams said. "Go all the way back to Portland when we were up 19 and lost. The games we're supposed to win we don't. It's ridiculous. No matter who it is, we don't win the games we're supposed to win."

Friday's loss to the Bobcats marked the Hawks' second consecutive back-breaking loss to the team that has owned them since coming into existence four years ago.

NEXT FOR HAWKS

> Who: vs. Heat

> When: 7 p.m. today

> TV; radio: SportSouth; 790 AM