Ayo Dosunmu doesn’t expect his role with the Chicago Bulls to be stagnant.
For the fourth-year guard, things have never stayed the same for long. Despite being slotted into a bench role at the beginning of each season, Dosunmu has started the majority of his games as a Bull, featuring in the starting lineup for 128 of the 233 games during the first three years of his NBA career.
This year, Dosunmu is back on the bench again — but it’s not clear how long that can (or will) last. Despite a flurry of new offensive activity from the fully recovered Zach LaVine, the Bulls are lacking severely in defense in their starting rotation. It’s a deficiency that Dosunmu is eager to fill if he’s asked.
Dosunmu is known among his teammates for being selfless. It’s been one of the defining traits of his tenure with the Bulls. But he also wants to start — and he’s not going to pretend like that’s not something he’s working toward.
“Of course that’s the goal,” Dosunmu said. “I wouldn’t sit here and tell you that I just wake up and say, ‘Oh, I love coming off the bench’ because as a competitor, you never want to have that mindset. But the position we’re in right now, it’s all about winning games. If that’s where we’re going with starting Josh, Coby, Zach, Vooch and Pat, you know, I’m all with it.”
Before the team even assembled for training camp, the starting lineup seemed clear: Coby White, LaVine and Josh Giddey would fill the backcourt, with Patrick Williams on the wing as a stretch forward and Nikola Vučević anchoring the paint.
This group makes logical sense — Williams and Vučević are automatic locks at their position, LaVine is the team’s supermax star, Giddey was the primary trade target over the summer and White was the brightest highlight of last season. But it’s also not immediately clear that this is the best starting group for the Bulls.
Bulls coach Billy Donovan is open to changing rotations as the season progresses, suggesting that Dosunmu could swap in for Giddey or White in certain matchups. But Donovan recognizes that making those changes midseason would require a serious shift in player expectations.
“That’s the challenge,” he said. “There’s gonna end up being the sacrifice component all those guards are gonna have to make. They may not be able to start. They’re gonna give something up — and maybe it’s coming off the bench.”
The Bulls know they are making a defensive sacrifice without Dosunmu starting. Williams is firmly the best defender in the starting rotation, but his versatility is limited because the guards in the starting group can’t switch up a position on defense.
While White has made significant improvement as a defender, both Giddey and LaVine are known as offensive one-way guards. When Dosunmu does join his teammates on the court, he immediately shoulders the responsibility of giving the defense a healthy jolt.
Starting lineups aren’t an end-all determination for any team in the NBA. Donovan has shown flexibility in changing up his starting and closing groups, which has allowed him to manage workloads and cater to the strengths of different players. This will likely be another factor this season as the Bulls attempt to slowly reintroduce Lonzo Ball into the rotation under a hard cap minutes restriction.
But determining a strong starting unit is vital for the Bulls, who had the fifth-worst net rating (-8.7) in the first quarter last season.
“We did some different things last year in terms of moving the lineup around,” Donovan said. “We started Ayo, we started Alex (Caruso), Javonte (Green) at times. So we’ll see. I don’t want to pass judgment on this group. But clearly that has been a trend for us over the last couple of years that we’ve got to try to get resolved.”
The preseason already offered an opportunity for Dosunmu to slot into the starting group, but a somewhat stilted outing Saturday resulted in a minor shoulder injury that kept the guard out of the second half. The guard knows he has plenty of work left to prove he’s ready to be a full-time starter, primarily on the offensive end where he is working to improve his shooting off the dribble and attack closeouts more effectively.
But Dosunmu is also intent on fulfilling whatever role is asked of him — a versatility that has become the cornerstone of his success with the Bulls.
“I’m all trying to do whatever it takes to help the team win,” he said. “Just having that trust, having that faith that whenever coach (Billy Donovan) brings me in, that he understands that he can rely on me to do the right things and be aggressive and just be an extension of the coach.”