For a .500 team, the Lakers are looking pretty good lately. Bryant is the biggest reason why.

Bryant scored 11 of his 34 points in the fourth quarter and hit the go-ahead layup with 9 seconds left, leading the Lakers back to .500 for the first time in more than two months with a 99-98 victory over the Atlanta Hawks on Sunday night.

Steve Blake stole Smith’s final pass in the waning seconds for the Lakers (30-30), who blew a 16-point lead in the second half before Bryant scored their last six points.

After Bryant scored the Lakers’ final basket while driving directly at Smith, Blake swiped Smith’s desperation pass from underneath Los Angeles’ basket. Bryant threw the ball high in the air to run out the clock on Los Angeles’ seventh straight home victory over the Hawks since 2006.

“I just had to attack,” Bryant said. “I wanted to attack and just go right at them. Take the game to them. Be aggressive. Be physical. And it worked out.”

Steve Nash had 15 points and 10 assists, while Dwight Howard added 11 points and 15 rebounds in the Lakers’ 13th win in 18 games. Los Angeles hung on for a quality win over the Hawks, a near-certain playoff team with ample motivation to knock off the high-profile Lakers.

Kobe wouldn’t allow it, making one big play after another down the stretch. Afterward, he repeatedly compared himself to a fine wine — only getting better with age.

“It was more of a message to my team here, to kind of have that will, that hunger, to push through it by any means necessary,” he said. “It’s just a challenge. I wouldn’t even really categorize it as fun. The fun comes in the challenge, and we’re up for it.”

The Lakers hadn’t been at .500 since Dec. 28, when they followed a win over Portland with six consecutive losses. They’ve spent the past six weeks digging themselves out of the latest hole in their rut-filled season, culminating in a lengthy stretch of recent solid play despite the absence of injured 7-footer Pau Gasol.

If the Lakers manage to upset Oklahoma City on Tuesday night, they would have their first winning record since Nov. 20, when they beat Brooklyn in coach Mike D’Antoni’s debut to go 6-5.

Al Horford scored 24 points and Smith had 19 for the Hawks, who had won four straight before consecutive road losses to the Suns and Lakers. Atlanta hasn’t beaten the Lakers anywhere since March 31, 2010.

Smith relished his matchup with Bryant, even if he got the short end of it.

“He’s been doing it for a long time, so you have to respect what he brings to the table,” Smith said. “He’s an assassin. He wants that moment. But from a defensive standpoint, I love taking a challenge like that and try to step up and try to make it tough for him. It was kind of like a tug-of-war match. We were going back and forth, and they made one more play than we did to win the game. I live for moments like this.”

Bryant put the Lakers up 96-95 with 2:18 to play on that ferocious dunk. After turnovers by both teams, Jeff Teague reclaimed the lead for Atlanta with 45 seconds left on a floating layup in traffic.

After Bryant hit two free throws, Horford put the Hawks back ahead with a dunk on a backdoor pass from Smith with 26.7 seconds left. But Bryant drove around Horford and right into Smith at the rim, willing the ball over his defense.

“There’s a reason why he’s the best player in the game,” Horford said of Bryant. “He did what he usually does, and we didn’t do a good enough job on him. It’s disappointing. We thought we worked hard and put ourselves in a position to win. We just had too many mistakes down the stretch.”

Devin Harris scored 12 of his 16 points in a three-minute spree late in the third quarter while Atlanta erased Los Angeles’ big lead.

Game notes

The Hawks finish their trip Monday night in Denver. … Atlanta coach Larry Drew was able to attend his son’s final UCLA home game on Saturday thanks to the fortunate coincidence in the Hawks’ schedule. Drew considers Los Angeles home after playing for the Clippers and Lakers, followed by a lengthy stint as a Lakers assistant coach in the 1990s prior to Phil Jackson’s arrival. … Novak Djokovic visited the Lakers’ locker room with fellow tennis player Justin Gimelstob before the game. One day after winning the Dubai Championships halfway around the globe, Djokovic spoke at length with Howard, who claims he won a school tennis tournament as a kid.

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“We still like this team a lot,” Buss said Thursday in an interview with ESPNLA 710 radio in Los Angeles. “How can you not believe in this team? This team is built to win. It’s a very, very solid team. We haven’t seen them all together and play together for games. In my mind, we would not consider a temporary fix or blow it up. Why blow up something we have a future with?

“It’s very difficult to talk this way because we’re five games under or six games under .500, and we’ve dug ourselves a hole. But at the same time, I feel that if we put it together, we can string seven or eight games in a row and dig ourselves out of this hole. If we play with the energy we’ve seen in the last two games, then I think you go into the playoffs with momentum.”

Buss was referring, of course, to the Lakers’ injury woes this season. Steve Nash missed seven weeks with a broken bone in his leg. Dwight Howard has struggled in his recovery from back surgery and is now out indefinitely with a torn labrum in his right shoulder. Pau Gasol has missed time with assorted leg injuries and is now out with a concussion. Backup point guard Steve Blake has missed all but the first five games with an abdominal injury.

Still, bad luck hasn’t been the whole story of the Lakers’ season. The team fired coach Mike Brown five games into the season and chose Mike D’Antoni to replace him when former coach and 11-time NBA champion Phil Jackson was available and interested in the job.

General manager Mitch Kupchak has previously said the Lakers chose D’Antoni because they felt his system would apply to this roster better than Jackson’s Triangle offense. Buss concurred and said he, Kupchak and his father, owner Dr. Jerry Buss, still feel that way.

“We thought Steve Nash was our future point guard for the next three years and we needed a coach we felt would fit with him,” Buss said. “That was one of the main issues where we thought that D’Antoni was better than Phil. Well, not better, nobody’s better than Phil, but we felt that he fit the team the way we wanted to work it.

“I like D’Antoni a lot. I still believe in him 100 percent. I have no questions about him. We just have to have this team work together and play together. We just don’t have enough information to analyze anything. It’s just not enough data to put your finger on a problem.”

Injuries and everything else aside, what if this team and its $99.2 million payroll don’t make the playoffs?

“We stuck our neck out with this payroll because Kobe (Bryant) is in the twilight of his career and we want to win championships,” Buss said. “Now, am I upset that we might not make the playoffs? Of course. I’d be upset if I had a $10 payroll or a $200 million payroll. I want to make the playoffs and I want to win championships. But to panic? No, we’re not going to panic.”

The Lakers could face a difficult situation in convincing Howard to re-sign with them when he becomes an unrestricted free agent July 1. The Lakers can offer more years and more money than any other team because of the way the NBA’s new collective bargaining agreement is structured, but would Howard want to stick around after a season that’s gone so poorly?

“If we make the playoffs, that means we’re playing well and I think we’ll go deep in the playoffs and it’s a no-brainer that he stays,” Buss said. “I think if it continues to fall apart because of injuries, I’m hoping we can convince him, ‘Look, everybody was injured, you weren’t 100 percent for the whole year, let’s give it another shot next year.’

“It points to 95 percent that we’ll be able to keep him. I can’t control what he does, but I can sure make a great argument.”

As for Gasol, who is averaging a career-low 12.6 points a game and has struggled each of the past two seasons to find his place in the Lakers’ offense, Buss said he expects the 7-foot Spaniard not only to revert to his previous form, but to play more in the low post, as both Gasol and Bryant have advocated.

“I love Pau Gasol,” Buss said. “The thing is, if you shoot the basketball from 6 feet, your percentages are going to be in the high 50s. If you shoot from 18 feet, you’re lucky to get 40 percent. To base his year off of his shooting percentages is just not the right way to analyze how he’s playing.

“I believe if we can get him down low, he can coexist with Dwight Howard if they play enough games to where they can play off each other. I believe eventually he will move down there and D’Antoni will move him down there and his percentage will go back right to where it was.”

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