Ayo Dosunmu knew this moment would come. Even when he was stuck on the bench, settling for 10-minute rotations as the Chicago Bulls stumbled in the opening weeks of the season.
Dosunmu never has been one to waver. His shot wasn’t falling. The Bulls weren’t winning. None of that mattered. The moment would come.
And now, as the Bulls struggle to adapt to injuries to key players — including Zach LaVine, Torrey Craig and Alex Caruso — Dosunmu’s impact has been critical to sparking a 6-3 record over the last nine games following Monday night’s 108-104 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers.
“I just try to always stay ready,” Dosunmu said. “Stay ready and try to grow. Grow each game, try to find ways to get better each game. Each game is not going to be the same, but you can learn from your mistakes, learn from trials and tribulations.
“That’s what I try to hold myself accountable to, just watch a lot of film and finding ways to be ready. No matter how I’m being guarded, just get any advantage to help myself.”
Dosunmu knows the Bulls play their best basketball when they’re moving at a high speed. He’s perhaps their most lethal transition player, streaking coast to coast and slinging passes across midcourt to his teammates.
This style is a natural antidote to the sluggish offense the team was mired in during its early struggles.
“When the tempo is up, we’re at our best,” Dosunmu said.
But Dosunmu isn’t just pushing the pace — he’s lifting the Bulls with his shooting. He was 6-for-15 from 3-point range over the last three games before Monday and dropped 24 points in Thursday’s win over the Miami Heat. When the Heat cut the Bulls lead to four, his 3-pointer deflated the comeback.
After starting the season in a shooting slump, Dosunmu’s recent improved accuracy has been long-awaited.
“That’s just putting my reps in,” he said. “A lot of my shots lately that I’ve been shooting are on target, but it was just a little too hard and it was just bouncing around. But I tell myself the only way to get better is to get my reps up. That eliminates any confusion. I just did that — get the shots up, ask my coaches for more reps and get them up.”
At the end of last season, Dosunmu was disappointed. The team hadn’t taken the step forward he hoped to see — and neither had he. He left the season with a laundry list of improvements to make.
One of the top focuses: improving his finishing around the rim. Dosunmu felt he was missing both the strength to absorb blows while going up for close-range shots and the finesse to move the ball around contesting hands.
The strength part was simple. Dosunmu got in the gym and the results quickly followed. But the touch was more complicated. For that, Dosunmu devoured film — not just of himself but of players he admired around the rim.
He fixated on the way Kyrie Irving and Steph Curry overcome their size disadvantage to finish over and around larger defenders. He studied how DeMar DeRozan’s shooting off the backboard can help dodge blocks. And he tried to pick up Coby White’s slow step, which helps shake defenders off his hip before taking a shot.
In a Dec. 11 game against the Milwaukee Bucks, Dosunmu attempted a new finishing tactic — a floater in transition over Brook Lopez. The shot successfully avoided Lopez’s sprawling frame, but it didn’t fall.
Still, Dosunmu felt it was progress — an example of how he can utilize an array of touches and angles to attack different situations.
“I understand that being realistic, you’re not going to just be able to keep going just using your speed and athleticism,” Dosunmu said. “At some point, you have to have some type of touch around the rim, different angles off the glass, play the layup, slow step. I’m just trying to find ways to get better.”
That realization has been widespread across the youngest members of the Bulls roster.
For coach Billy Donovan, this is a crucial learning curve to guide young guards through if they are going to successfully navigate the transition from college to the NBA.
“When guys leave college, generally they have been able to always out-athlete lesser competition,” Donovan said. “What they’ve relied on their whole life, they’re no longer the biggest, strongest and fastest and it just doesn’t work.
“Generally a lot of these guys are sometimes banging their head against the wall because they’ve been so successful and they keep doing it and doing it and doing it and they keep getting the same result. That’s part of Ayo’s growth. He learned. He realized he has to add some different things to his game to be able to do what he does really well.”
But no matter how many pieces of different players’ games Dosunmu absorbs into his own, he’ll always play a distinctive style of basketball — one that belongs to him and his hometown.
White said that when Dosunmu plays, it’s clear where he came from. And while his game continues to grow, that unique quality will continue to define how Dosunmu attacks each play.
“It’s the way he carries himself on the court, the aggressiveness he plays with, the confidence he plays with,” White said. “A lot of Chicago guys, they’re just hounds, they’re dogs — on both ends of the court. Defensively he’s a dog; on offense he’s relentless.
“You can tell he’s from Chicago by the way he plays. He has a killer mentality. Every time he steps on the floor, he’s going to give it his all and compete at a very, very high level no matter how the game is going.”