Ayo Dosunmu always has understood the value of patience in his role for the Chicago Bulls.
It was the key to his rookie season, when he mostly played reserve minutes until injuries suddenly propelled him into the starting point guard job. And it defined the way he responded to a slight decrease in minutes and scoring during his second season.
As Dosunmu now embraces a fluid role — sometimes a starter, sometimes the sixth man — he relies on that steadiness to focus his play.
“Everybody wants to be able to go out there and help the team win,” Dosunmu said. “Just being able to have the opportunity, you never take it for granted. This is an opportunity a lot of people wish to have and I’m just really living in the moment to continue to get better, to continue to do whatever I can to help the team.”
Dosunmu always has been a relentless defender and strong rim finisher. But this season he’s tapping into a new part of his game: long-range shooting.
Dosunmu has doubled his production behind the arc from 0.7 made 3-pointers per game last season to 1.4 while improving his accuracy from 31.2% to 41.7%. He credits director of player development Peter Patton for guiding his improvement. Patton has been pivotal in working with young players such as Dalen Terry and Julian Phillips on their shots.
Each player has different weaknesses in his shot upon entering the NBA — trajectory, consistency, shooting path. For Dosunmu, the main area of focus was building consistency in both his load-up motion and follow-through.
He said repetition was the key to improving his form. He spent hours in the gym focused on making consecutive shots — five in a row, eight in a row, 10 in a row.
Each time he shoots, Dosunmu focuses on the path his hand follows to ensure it’s tight to the center of his balance. And when he releases the ball, he holds his hand aloft in a follow-through that might seem dramatic but is essential to create the same spin and pinpoint aim.
The result has been the best shooting streak of Dosunmu’s professional career. Over the last 15 games, he led the team from deep by shooting at a 53% clip on 4.4 attempts per game. He went 5-for-7 in Monday’s win over the Atlanta Hawks, then followed that up by scoring all 12 of his points from 3-point range in Wednesday’s loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
But it’s not just long-range shooting that has boosted Dosunmu’s scoring. He’s one of the fastest players on the roster and uses that to his advantage in the open court, setting the pace for the Bulls to score 17.3 points per game in transition — the sixth-most in the league.
Dosunmu’s efficiency in transition relies on balance. When a shot goes up, he’s a “go guy” tasked with seeking out rebounds. But once the ball is secured by a teammate, Dosunmu is always looking at the opposite rim. He’s typically the first player down the court, moving at the fastest pace — and that’s crucial for the Bulls, even if Dosunmu doesn’t touch the ball in transition.
In his first two seasons, Dosunmu noted that his first instinct was to look to score. But he has found value this season in pushing the pace for other reasons: getting downhill, opening a lane for a teammate or forcing the opponent to drop deeper into defense, giving the Bulls an advantage when they rotate the ball in the half-court offense.
“My first year, if I saw something in transition, I was thinking, ‘Basket, basket, basket,’” Dosunmu said. “Now I’m quarterbacking it. I have my first read, my second read, my third read. I’m feeling more and more confident every game.”
His growth isn’t a surprise to coach Billy Donovan. But it was the product of plenty of effort from both coach and player over the last three years.
When describing how his past and current players respond to feedback, Donovan used a simple analogy: If you tell a guy that a pot is hot, how would he respond?
Joakim Noah? He would touch it just to check if his hand gets burned. Al Horford? He would take your word for it.
Dosunmu falls in the first category, leaning into an innate stubbornness and relying on learning from experience.
“Ayo is touching the pot,” Donovan said. “He’s always been coachable. I don’t want to make it seem like he’s not. But he’s got this stubbornness to him in a good way. He’s — I don’t want to say defiant — but he’s just got a will, he’s got a drive, he’s got a competitiveness to him.”
Sometimes this comes across as a fault. Donovan felt Dosunmu could have listened better last year, which was a central topic of the guard’s exit interview after his sophomore season.
But it’s also what drives Dosunmu’s dogged relentlessness — even when he’s not getting minutes or he’s struggling with a part of his game.
“He’s a Chicago kid,” DeMar DeRozan said. “The resiliency, the toughness, the drive, the spirit that he carries himself (with), it’s only a matter of time — not to talk about the motivation and the hard work that he puts in. It’s always a matter of time for it to come out and you see it.”
