Hawks hold off Kobe and the Lakers

Mike Bibby had a feeling it was his night early. He wasn’t sure until late in Sunday’s game.

With his Hawks holding a double-digit lead over the Los Angeles Lakers and a record crowd of 20,148 at Philips Arena on its feet, his hunch was confirmed.

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Louie Favorite/lfavorite@ajc.com

Joe Johnson had 10 points in the win over the visiting Los Angeles Lakers.

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He watched his last 3-point attempt bounce high off the back of the rim, then off the top of the backboard and finally through the net. His shot and performance put the exclamation point on the Hawks’ rousing 86-76 win over the Lakers to snap a two-game losing streak.

“I thought it was going over the backboard,” a smiling Bibby said afterward in a jubilant Hawks locker room. “I was about to cut back the other way and saw it bounce and said, ‘Go in,’ and it did. Hey, I’ll take that.”

The Hawks (43-30) will certainly take a huge momentum-shifting win over one of the league’s best teams with yet another monster matchup on tap Tuesday at Philadelphia, a possible playoff opponent.

After suffering back-to-back home losses for the first time in more than two months the Hawks bounced back with arguable their most dominant defensive performance of the season.

They held the Lakers (58-15) to a season scoring low. They also kept superstar Kobe Bryant under wraps in the second half as the Lakers tried to rally from a 16-point deficit.

“We played together and our shots were going in,” said Bibby, who led the Hawks with 21 points, including 5-for-6 shooting from beyond the 3-point line. “You couldn’t have asked for a better game.”

To get it before the largest regular-season crowd in the nearly 10-year history of Philips Arena only made it sweeter. The Hawks had won seven straight home games earlier this month only to be humbled by San Antonio Wednesday and Boston Friday.

“I think everybody just got tired of not showing up and getting embarrassed at home by some of the top teams in the league,” Hawks swingman Mo Evans said. “Even as bad as we played those last couple of games, we still had chances to win. So we knew if we came out and gave a better effort it was inevitable that we’d have one of those games when we came out and played like we know we’re capable of playing.”

Even more surprising than the way the Hawks handled the Lakers was how they did it.

“This was probably the best defensive game we’ve played all season,” Hawks coach Mike Woodson said. On the other end of the floor they were surprisingly unpredictable, discarding their usual approach of playing outside in through Bibby and captain and All-Star Joe Johnson, who had just 10 points and eight assists. Johnson played sticky defense on Bryant throughout the second half while a whoever-has-the-best shot approach worked.

“The thing we did best was we attacked from so many different angles,” said Evans, who finished with 13 points, including three huge 3-pointers in the third quarter, and six rebounds. “We had seven different players involved in the game and that makes it hard to key on just one person. We swung the ball and made every player on the floor a threat and that’s hard to guard no matter who you’re playing.”

Pau Gasol led the Lakers with 21 points and 11 rebounds. Bryant added 17 on 7-for-19 shooting from the floor. But no other Lakers played reached double figures.

“The Hawks shot the ball better than we did from the 3-point line,” Bryant said. “They’ve always played us well in this building. My hat’s off to them for maintaining control of the game and withstanding our runs.”