Hawks’ New Year’s resolution: More road wins

Hawks point guard Mike Bibby laughed when asked if he had any New Year’s resolutions on his mind.

But if there were anything he would like his team to do better this season, it will be done away from home — the Hawks have won six straight games, two straight on the road and nine of their past 10 overall.

“We have to start winning on the road,” Bibby said. “We are [7-8] on the road this season, and in order to win this thing, you have to win on the road.”

That means showing up for tonight’s game against the Nets in New Jersey in a better frame of mind than they did the last time they played at Izod Center.

In a 115-108 loss to the Nets on Nov. 14, the Hawks were still reeling from their first loss of the season, a 103-102 heartbreaker at the buzzer to the Celtics in Boston.

The Hawks managed to keep up with the Nets most of that night, but rookie center Brook Lopez wore the Hawks out early, and Devin Harris and Vince Carter proved to be too much to handle down the stretch.

Harris and Carter chewed up the Hawks’ defense the next night, handing the Hawks their first home loss of the season 24 hours later in a 119-107 track meet of a game.

In a league where matchups can mean everything on a given night, the Hawks’ vaunted backcourt of Bibby and captain and All-Star Joe Johnson might have met their explosive equal in Harris and Carter, whose combined scoring average of 46.3 points trumps Johnson and Bibby’s 39.5.

“They’re a handful,” said Hawks forward Josh Smith, who was injured and missed both of the previous games against the Nets. “They’re giving everybody fits, so it’s really up to our team defense to try and slow those guys down. We’re going to have to close off the scoring lanes and try and force them do as much work away from the lane and the basket as possible.

“And even if you do that, you’re inviting them to shoot from deep, which isn’t necessarily a good thing either if they’re stroking it from out there.”

The team-defense theory is surely the Hawks’ best option. When they’ve been successful on the road this season, they’ve used their length and athletic ability on defense to stymie teams, particularly late in games.

Hawks coach Mike Woodson used three different primary defenders on Indiana swingman Danny Granger in a 110-104 victory over the Pacers in Indiana on Tuesday night.

“We tried to show him different looks early,” Woodson said. “We had Marvin Williams on him to start the game and then Joe guarded him for a large part the rest of the way. And then in the fourth quarter, down the stretch, we switched Josh on to him and were able to limit his opportunities when it mattered most.”

Trying to limit the touches of Harris, Carter and even Lopez, who punished the Hawks with 25 points in the first game but just five in the rematch a night later, will be crucial to the Hawks’ effort to live up to Bibby’s plea for his team to “take care of business” on the road.

“When you win five straight games at home you get into a comfort zone and you get used to the lift you get from your own fans,” Johnson said of the Hawks’ surge at the finish of their recent eight-game homestand they finished with a 7-1 mark. “We won’t have that on the road, so we have to find ways to grind out these games on the road when we know we’re the only people in the building that want us to win the game.

“The same way we did it in Indiana and in Miami before that. You have to be able to grind on the road.”