Are Wizards a real NBA team? It's questionable as Bulls roll to victory

Thanks to a career-high 34 points from Ayo Dosunmu, the Bulls treated the 11-win Wizards just like an 11-win team should be treated, easily winning 127-98.

SHARE Are Wizards a real NBA team? It's questionable as Bulls roll to victory
Ayo Dosunmu

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 Hall of Famer Jerry West.

It was the only actual proof that the Wizards were in fact a real NBA team on Saturday night.

It wasn’t the roster; that’s for sure. Castoffs from other organizations scooped out of the dumpster before pickup day. It wasn’t the coaching, especially with the lack of motivation and effort Washington displayed.

Nope, it was just the shorts, and the Bulls enjoyed kicking those up and down the United Center floor in their 127-98 victory.

In what was one of the more one-sided wins 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 was Chicago’s own Ayo Dosunmu, who scored a career-high 34 points and added nine assists.

“That was great; he was great,” Bulls coach Billy Donovan said. “I think him having the opportunity to see some of those things against the Clippers [last week], him staying aggressive 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, 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, Nikola Vucevic was 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, 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.

It was a B-word, Vucevic said, and it didn’t sit well with him.

“You’ve got to watch what you say and how you talk to people,” Vucevic said of the run-in.

Either way, it obviously motivated Vucevic, who had 29 points and 13 rebounds.

The good news is the Bulls still have two more games with the Wizards.

If there was one aspect of the game to be critical about, it was the way the Bulls finished the last five minutes. But that was Donovan just being picky.

Because of the big lead, Donovan was able to take a bit of the workload off DeMar DeRozan. He played 35 minutes, scored 13 points and took only seven shots.

Every Bull finished on the plus side with five players scoring in double figures.

Donovan, of course, wasn’t completely satisfied, but it was as close as he could get, considering it was only the second time this season that the Bulls beat an opponent by more than 20 points.

“I wish we could have closed a little bit better,” Donovan said. “Overall, I thought our guys concentrated and focused. When you can get a chance to [win by this margin], it’s a good thing.”

The Latest
Spouse expects she’ll be bad at the job and miss out on family time.
As the death toll mounts in the war in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis worsens, protesters at universities all over the U.S. are demanding that schools cut financial ties to Israel and divest from companies they say are enabling the conflict.
White Sox starter Chris Flexen delivered the best start of his season, throwing five scoreless innings, three walks and two strikeouts in Friday’s 9-4 win over the Rays.
Notes: Lefty Justin Steele threw in an extended spring training game Friday.