HAWKS 105, NETS 88: Bibby, Johnson break out of slump

Joe Johnson’s slump is over.

Mike Bibby’s, too.

And so is the Hawks’ losing streak.

The night after being named to the Eastern Conference All-Star team for the third consecutive year, Johnson returned to his All-Star form after a three-week hiatus.

He and his backcourt mate Bibby were the catalysts in the Hawks’ 105-88 victory over New Jersey on Friday night at Philips Arena.

The Hawks snapped a three-game losing streak overall and against the Nets, improved to 27-19 and regained their footing after a week of struggles at home and on the road.

Johnson and Bibby combined for 49 points, easily their best combined night in quite some time.

“We just wanted to come out and be aggressive, especially against this team,” Johnson said. “We were very relentless in getting to the basket and making plays. Knowing this team had beaten us three times already this season, we knew we had to come out as the aggressor and make a statement.”

Johnson scored a game-high 29 points, outplaying Nets All-Star point guard Devin Harris and Vince Carter. Johnson made 11 of 17 shots from the floor but missed reaching the 10,000-point milestone for his career by one point.

Bibby had scored 12 points on 5-for-36 shooting from the floor in his past three games before going for 20 points on 7-for-15 shooting against the Nets.

“I came in and shot some extra shots [Thursday night],” Bibby said. “So I felt a whole lot better with my release, and the shots were falling.”

Johnson and Bibby broke out of their combined weeklong slump at just about the same time in the second quarter. They combined for 23 points as the Hawks built a 55-53 lead at halftime.

“It’s a great win,” Hawks coach Mike Woodson said. “We’ve really struggled with this team. I don’t know what it is, but they’ve had their way with us. I just thought we made a really great effort to defend. We rebounded the ball, but we really defended. We executed our plan, and it worked.”

The plan was to slow down Harris and Carter, who had combined to average 43.1 points per game this season. Harris finished with 20 and Carter 18, but neither was effective with the game in the balance in the fourth quarter, when Johnson took over everything.

“You can’t ask for a guy to do anything more,” said Marvin Williams, who added 16 points and 11 rebounds for the Hawks. “It’s good to get both of those guys back on track on the same night and to get a win over Jersey playing the way we knew we had to stop them. That’s the perfect kind of night we needed with the way we’ve been struggling lately. It seemed like we finally got our flow back a little bit.”

Just how much of Friday night’s flow the Hawks saved will be on display tonight in Milwaukee.

Johnson said it doesn’t matter who is available if he and Bibby do what they’re supposed to do.

“Even if we don’t play great, we have to play pretty good,” Johnson said. “I talked to Mike about that, and he agreed.

“I take a lot of the blame for the way we’ve been playing in January because I haven’t been playing up to par. But in order for us to succeed as a team, we have to at least play pretty good. And tonight was an example.”

NEXT FOR HAWKS

> Who: at Bucks

> When: 8:30 p.m. today

> TV; radio: No TV; 790 AM