Kobe, Lakers Ground Hawks

Watch out Minnesota. Shaquille O'Neal is looking to make up for an off night.

Kobe Bryant scored 30 points to make up for a poor shooting night by the foul-plagued O'Neal and give the Los Angeles Lakers a 95-88 win over the Atlanta Hawks on Thursday night.

"I'll just have to get back on track tomorrow," O'Neal said. "I don't like to have two bad games in a row."

The Lakers, who have won four straight and 11 of 12, are at Minnesota on Friday night.

O'Neal, the NBA's leading scorer, was limited to 28 minutes by foul trouble and finished with nine points. He shot 4-of-15 from the field and 1-of-5 from the foul line.

"Everything seemed to be a foul, whatever he did," Lakers coach Phil Jackson said. "One thing led to another, and ultimately, he wasn't even given a chance to play the last part of the game."

Isaiah Rider led the Hawks with 33 points his seventh 30-point game before a crowd of 19,463, Atlanta's first sellout at the new Philips Arena.

"We definitely wanted to make a statement tonight and wanted to do better than we obviously did," Rider said. "We came up short against a good team. They had a better night and we played really sluggish."

Bryant, who missed the first 15 games of the season with a broken hand, scored five of his points during a Los Angeles 15-3 run in a three-minute span, taking the Lakers from a 59-55 lead with 3:54 left in the third period to a 74-58 margin with 55 seconds remaining.

"Kobe picked up the scoring slack," Jackson said. "A season. He scored six points against Houston on Nov. 10 after getting ejected in the second quarter for ighting with Charles Barkley."

Glen Rice added 11 points for the Lakers and Derek Fisher had 10.

Alan Henderson had 13 points for the Hawks and Dikembe Mutombo had 11 points and 11 rebounds for Atlanta, which lost for the third time in four games.

The Lakers took a 50-45 halftime lead as Bryant scored 17 points. O'Neal was 3-of-11 from the field and 1-of-5 from the free throw line in the opening half.

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