Hawks beat Bucks, close in on securing 4th seed

MILWAUKEE — When you go as long as the Hawks have without back-to-back road victories, you don’t worry about the particulars.

You just take your win and get home as fast as you can.

That’s why they had no problem sliding out of the Bradley Center on Wednesday night after defeating Milwaukee 113-105 for their second consecutive come-from-behind road victory.

“A win is a win,” Hawks coach Mike Woodson said afterward. “We finally woke up and started playing after halftime. And that was the difference.”

They almost gave it away in the final minutes, though.

A commanding 10-point lead with six minutes to play had disappeared with two minutes left.

It took a Mike Bibby 3-pointer from the corner, off a slick pass from Josh Smith, to break a 102-102 tie with 1:31 to play. Joe Johnson followed with a driving layup on the Hawks’ next possession to push the lead back to five, 107-102, and give the Hawks a little more breathing room.

Johnson’s contested baseline jumper with 17.6 seconds to play was the final dagger the Hawks needed. He finished his night with a game-high 30 points on 10-for-18 shooting from the floor.

Bibby had 22 points and eight assists, Smith 21 and seven and Al Horford 19 and nine.

“We can’t keep playing uphill like this,” Johnson said. “It takes so much energy to come back like that and we end up running ourselves ragged just to get back into games. But every win is so important for us right now. We just have to get them any way we can.”

In need of victories to solidify their hold on the fourth spot in the Eastern Conference playoff chase, and the home-court advantage in the first round that comes with it, the Hawks (45-34) dialed up yet another gutsy performance.

The last time the Hawks won consecutive road games was before the All-Star break.

They knocked off Minnesota and Charlotte in a three-day span, Feb. 4-6, without Johnson, who missed the trip with an upper respiratory infection that dogged him for almost a month.

Faced with a double-digit hole to dig out of for the second straight night in the second half, the Hawks went to work in the third quarter.

After trailing 62-53 at halftime, they walked the Bucks down 31-12 in the third quarter and led 84-74 at the start of the fourth quarter.

They got another balanced effort, with scoring and rebounding up and down the roster, while also shooting surprisingly well from the free-throw line for a change — Smith shot 10-for-14 to lead the cause as the Hawks finished 34-for-44 from the line.

“The thing I like is that we control our own destiny,” Horford said. “There’s no question about that. Tonight, there was just urgency on our part in the second half. That’s what did it for us.”

Had the Hawks been any more generous on defense in the first half, the Bucks might have scored 70 or more by halftime.

As it was, they torched the Hawks for those 62 points by shooting a sterling 24-for-39 (.615) from the floor.

It was a similar script to the one the Hawks followed Tuesday night in Toronto, when they let the Raptors control the game early before taking over in the third quarter.

But the Hawks’ generosity didn’t last. They shut things down after halftime and finished off the Bucks the way a playoff team is supposed to treat a lottery-bound squad this time of year.

“We’ve got a chance to finish off the season the right way,” Johnson said. “That’s all we have to think about right now. But we’ve got to start doing it from the start and not just for a half.”