The Wizards offered up very little resistance against the Bulls on Saturday, and Ayo Dosunmu took full advantage in scoring a career-high 34 points.
Charles Rex Arbogast/AP
The NBA logo is on the right side of the shorts.
It’s small, but still it’s legend Jerry West in all his glory.
The only actual proof that showed the Washington Wizards were in fact a real NBA team on Saturday night.
It’s not the roster. That’s for sure. Castoffs from other organizations scooped out of the dumpster before pick-up day. It’s not the coaching, especially with the lack of motivation and effort that the visiting team played with.
Nope, it’s just the shorts, and the Bulls enjoyed kicking those up and down the United Center floor in the 127-98 win.
In what was one of the more one-sided victories of the season, the Bulls (33-35) finally treated an 11-win team exactly how it should be treated, jumping on the Wizards from tip-off to final horn.
And the beneficiary of Washington’s lackluster play?
Chicago’s own Ayo Dosunmu, who scored a career-high 34 points with nine assists to go along with it.
“That was great. He was great,” Bulls coach Billy Donovan said of Dosunmu. “I think him having the opportunity to see some of those things against the Clippers (last week), him staying aggressive the game will tell him what to do next. I still think there’s a lot of room (to get better at scoring). He’s worked on that. He’ll get better form this year as well. The one thing I admire about him is he works to get better.”
Just how badly did the Bulls bully the Wizards? With just under five minutes left in the game and Nikola Vucevic having words with Eugene Omoruyi, the next time down the floor not only did the Bulls big man take the seldom-heard-of Omoruyi to the rim with a step-through lay-in, but after he drew the foul on the play he even bent down and flashed the “too small” gesture to Omoruyi.
Tempers never escalated beyond that, but for Vucevic – who only lashes out at referees admittedly mostly in Serbian – to have words with another player showed just how the Bulls were feeling about themselves on the evening.
“Something was said (by Omoruyi),” Donovan said of the exchange.
The good news was they still have two more games with the Wizards this season.
If there was one aspect of the game to be critical about was the way the Bulls finished the final five minutes. But that was the coach just being picky.
“Something was said.”
What it was according to Vucevic was a B-word, and that didn’t sit well with him.
“You got to watch what you say and how you talk to people,” Vucevic said of the run-in.
Either way it obviously motivated the center as he finished with 29 points and 13 rebounds.
The nice part of the night was because of the big lead throughout, Donovan was able to take a bit of the workload off DeMar DeRozan with the veteran getting out with 35 minutes of work and scoring just 13 points on seven shots.
On the night, everyone that played finished in the plus of the plus/minus category with five players also finishing in double-digit scoring.
Not that Donovan was completely satisfied, but it was as close as the coach could get considering it was just the second time this season the Bulls beat an opposing team by more than 20 points.
“I wish we could have closed a little bit better,” Donovan added. “Overall, I thought our guys concentrated and focused. When you can get a chance to (win by this much) it’s a good thing.”