For 48 minutes Wednesday night, the Chicago Bulls put together an offensive performance that reflected the ideal vision for the team since it began training camp last fall in Nashville, Tenn.
The ball rarely stuck in one place. It flowed through the half-court — slashing drives to the rim, forcing the defense to crumple in the paint before whipping passes back to the perimeter.
Coby White was the clear star, dazzling with a 42-point performance in a 131-116 victory against the Atlanta Hawks at the United Center, keeping their season alive. But guard Ayo Dosunmu was the fulcrum of that success, cracking open every seam in the Hawks defense to rip his way to the rim.
Against the high-scoring output of White, DeMar DeRozan (22 points) and Nikola Vučević (24), Dosunmu’s 19 points might not seem like the most important factor in the win. But his downhill momentum was contagious, fueling a constant motion alongside White that the Bulls often have struggled to create.
The result was the fifth highest-scoring output of the season.
“We just wanted to play with pace, get downhill,” White said. “(Dosunmu) does that every game so it’s not out of the norm for him. We knew if we attacked the paint and got the defense to collapse, we needed to either finish or spray it out.”
Entering the second play-in game against the Heat on Friday in Miami (6 p.m. CDT, ESPN) with the No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs on the line, the question is simple: Can Dosunmu continue to be the motor fueling the Bulls?
When it comes to identity, the greatest challenge for the Bulls has been showing up consistently. They recorded consecutive wins only 13 times and spent the final three weeks losing to nonplayoff teams immediately after racking up decisive victories against top-ranked opponents such as the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Beyond their laundry list of injuries, this is the most befuddling aspect of the team. DeRozan regularly labels the Bulls as a “Dateline episode” for their tendency to blow leads. But advancing to the playoffs requires consistency — at least in two games of the whirlwind tournament.
Photos: Chicago Bulls beat Atlanta Hawks 131-116 in NBA Play-In Tournament
Creating the same level of penetration and inside-out movement will be a far more difficult task in Miami. The Hawks finished the season with the fourth-lowest defensive rating in the league at 118.4 and seemed to flounder at times under the offensive pressure the Bulls created, especially when point guard Trae Young was placed in the center of a zone in an attempt to disrupt the flow of the offense through the paint.
The Heat finished fifth in defensive rating at 111.5 and are far more disciplined. They do not balk at physicality and field one of the best rim protectors in the NBA in Bam Adebayo, who was in the Defensive Player of the Year conversations for most of the season.
The Heat will be without star Jimmy Butler, who suffered an MCL injury in his right knee in Wednesday’s play-in loss to the Philadelphia 76ers, and Terry Rozier (neck). Even without Butler, the Heat will provide much stiffer competition for the Bulls than did the Hawks.
But consistency isn’t necessarily about results. For the Bulls, the key Friday will be locking in to the mentality that fueled Wednesday’s offensive output.
As a team that often has struggled to start games and halves on the front foot, Dosunmu recognized that aggressiveness would be crucial for the Bulls in their rematch of last year’s play-in loss.
“We’re definitely just in the mindset of being aggressive,” Dosunmu said. “Coach always tell us put our eyes on the rim and then read the details from that. When we got a game and stakes like this — win or go home — you want to go out there and stay in attack mode, not be afraid of the possibility of it being our last game but embracing that.”
