HAWKS 83, BOBCATS 79: Range adjusted to rally at home

The formula gets tweaked every night.

One night it’s raining shots from beyond the 3-point line. The next it’s defense and rebounding.

Other times it’s sheer guts in a grind-it-out-affair.

But one way or another, the Hawks just keep finding ways to win on their home floor.

They overcame their own awful shooting performance from deep for the latest, an ugly 83-79 win over Southeast Division rival Charlotte Monday night before a crowd of 12,733 at Philips Arena.

“It doesn’t matter how we do it,” Hawks point guard Mike Bibby said. “As long as we win.”

The Hawks won their third straight home game and 12th in 13 tries dating back to last season’s playoff series against Boston, the team they’ll see here Wednesday night.

“Sometimes you’re going to have games like this that are ugly,” Hawks coach Mike Woodson said. “Larry [Brown’s] teams always defend and get after you. I thought they did a great job in the first of getting after us, and then we kind of returned the favor in the second half and made things happen our way.”

The Hawks didn’t take a lead until Al Horford scored on a put-back for a 70-68 advantage with 11:11 to play in the game.

The Hawks (15-9) never trailed again, but they had to fend off a charge from the Bobcats until the final buzzer. Joe Johnson’s fade-away baseline jumper over Emeka Okafor with 24.6 seconds to play was the final dagger in an impressive comeback win.

“We have a tendency to make things harder than they have to be,” Johnson said after his 28-point, eight-assist and five-rebound night. “This is a game we should have won going away. But we always seem to make it harder on ourselves.”

Perhaps that had something to do with the Hawks’ woeful 3-for-20 from beyond the 3-point line, by far their worst shooting night from distance this season.

And perhaps the Hawks were daydreaming about the Celtics early Monday night while they were being shredded by the Bobcats for 30 points in the paint before halftime, when they trailed 48-42.

The Hawks lost the first game against the Celtics this season, a 103-102 thriller Celtics captain Paul Pierce finished with an 18-footer with 0.5 seconds left on Nov. 12 at TD Banknorth Garden. It was the Hawks’ first loss of the season.

“Nothing against Charlotte, they’re a great team, but people just don’t come out for teams like that,” said Josh Smith, who finished his night with 15 points, seven rebounds, two assists and five monster blocks, one with 8.9 seconds to play that kept Okafor from finishing what looked like an uncontested layup until Smith flew into the play. “It’s hard to generate energy because there’s no one in the stands at the start of the game. So we had to jump-start ourselves in the huddle and treat this like we do an away game and get the energy going.”

Once they got it going, the Hawks didn’t stop, and the Bobcats were unable to make anything happen in the fourth quarter.

They missed 22 of their final 26 shots —- six of the final 18 misses were blocked by either Smith or Horford, who finished his night with 12 points, 14 rebounds, five assists and two blocks.

“The thing with Charlotte is we always have close games,” Horford said. “It’s always a grind with them. But this is one of the games we had to go out and win. We couldn’t fall into that trap of looking ahead to Boston.”

NEXT FOR HAWKS

> Who: vs. Celtics

> When: 7 p.m. Wednesday

> TV; radio: SportSouth; 790 AM