Basketball is not a sport, it's a way of life.

Ruing my words on Rui, tick tock goes the Shai scoring clock, A-Yo, let's go!...

• While Coby White has been the Bulls guard getting all the Most Improved Player notice, his third-year batterymate Ayo Dosunmu has started to become more than just a fun story. Dosunmu, who is as homegrown a product as you’ll find in this era of professional sports, having played his high school basketball in Chicago (Westinghouse & Morgan Park), before heading all the way to Champaign to attend the University of Illinois, and then being drafted by the Bulls with the 38^th selection in the '21 draft, entered the league regarded as a project who would need to either become a much better ballhandler or shooter to distinguish his role at the professional level. At 6’5, with a very solidly built frame, Dosunmu was your classic do-it-all guard at Illinois, flashing a penchant for hitting big shots and playing a tough brand of basketball. But being a jack-of-all-trades, master of none, hurt Dosunmu out of college, where despite being in the top-2 in minutes, points, rebounds, assists, and steals, for a 24-7 Illini squad, questions loomed about his potential fit in the league. Dosunmu was a good, if not natural, distributor, with a handle that at times got looser than the suspension on an ’04 Explorer. He also only shot 34.5% from distance in his three years at Illinois, with mechanics that needed some work in terms of speeding up his release—particularly for a shooter that shoots damn-near a set shot from the catch and whose guide hand creeps way too far over the top of the ball, forcing a line drive trajectory. Though he averaged 20.1 points per game his junior year, his last in college, Dosunmu was the type of player who scored more by admirable determination than awe-inducing execution. What was never a question about Dosunmu though was his work ethic, and that continued to shine from the first day of training camp his rookie season, a year in which Dosunmu would be a somewhat surprising, albeit warranted, selection as All-Rookie second-team player as a combo-guard for the Bulls. Fast-forward two seasons, and Dosunmu’s role has not changed much for Chicago, but his deficiencies sure have. For the season, Dosunmu is averaging career-high in points (10.8) and three-point shooting (40%), while shooting 49% from the floor overall. But Dosunmu seems to have really turned a corner once Father Time became a year older. Since January 5th, which began Chicago’s longest stretch of above .500 play this season (16-12 to date), Dosunmu has been fourth on the team in scoring (14.3), third in assists (4.1), second in field goal percentage (51.8%), second in threes made per game (2.1), and first in three-point percentage (45.8%). Dosunmu is still a guard without a pure positional fit, but that suits Chicago, a team besieged by injuries on the perimeter this year, just fine, as they have utilized him at point guard, shooting guard, and small forward this season. Dosunmu has responded by turning himself into enough of a viable threat from distance that teams have to honor him on the catch. While with the ball in his hands, Ayo has also become very good at leveraging his length to probe while snaking through the lane, often getting defenders stuck on the hostage dribble—when you have a defender pinned on your ass and slow your pace; a Trae Young and CP-3 favorite—to get into the rim. Whether on-ball, or on a pump and go, when Dosunmu decides to drive, he has become one of the league’s most efficient players, as his 57.7% field goal percentage on drives this season ranks him seventh in the entire NBA. More impressively, of the top-fifteen players on that list, LeBron and Kawhi are the only other players both driving with that level of efficiency and shooting 40% or above from distance for the season. What this means for Dosunmu’s role with the Bulls next season, particularly with the news that Lonzo Ball is finally starting to ramp-up activity, and with the looming decisions on Patrick Williams and DeMar DeRozan’s potential free agency, as well as Zach Lavine’s trade talks, will be interesting. But with an extremely team-friendly contract—he signed a three-year $21 million extension this past July—and a game that just seems to be consistently improving, Chicago better not think of trading this jack.

• I’ve had sleep problems all my life. While I have tried a full retinue of means to approach solving it, all to varying levels of disappointment, I have found that a replicable regimen is often beneficial. As with most things, consistency breeds success. With that in mind, I’ve been thinking of perhaps trying to fall asleep to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander games. Because that man’s ability to score 30 points is damn-near metronomic. The Thunder guard—and my runner-up for this season’s MVP award at the moment—has gone for 30 or more in 47 of the 62 games that he’s played in this season. That means if you go to an Oklahoma City Thunder game, there is a 76% chance that you’ll see Shai go off. Shai has the most 30-point games of all scorers this season, and outside of Luka, who is outscoring Shai by 3.4 points per game, no one has been particularly close to as consistent a bucket as SGA. Here are the number of 30-point outings for top-5 scorers not named Shai at this point in the season: Luka (43), Giannis (36), Kevin Durant (23), Donovan Mitchell (20). But it’s not just this year, here’s how Shai stacks up against the top-5 scorers over the prior five seasons:

  2022-23: Embiid (44), Dončić (44), Lillard (33), Gilgeous-Alexander (45), Antetokounmpo (39)

  2021-22: Embiid (40), James (34), Antetokounmpo (34), Durant (25), Dončić (27)

  2020-21: Curry (38), Beal (34), Lillard (35), Embiid (23), Antetokounmpo (25)

  2019-20: Harden (44), Beal (31), Lillard (30), Young (31), Antetokounmpo (37)

  2018-19: Harden (57), George (32), Antetokounmpo (31), Embiid (29), James (15)

  Shai not only owns the second and third highest totals of 30-point games in a season over the last 6 years—during a stretch where offensive numbers have been exploding—but outside of Harden’s total of 57 in the season in which he averaged 36.1, Shai already has the highest total of such games over the last 17 seasons. More so, with OKC still having 20 games on their schedule and in the fight for a number one seed in the Western Conference, and SGA having only missed one contest so far this season, were he to appear in a conservative 17 of those remaining 20 games and maintain his pace of 30-point nights, he would finish this season with an impressive 60 games, which would be good for the ninth highest total of 30-point games scored in NBA history. Here is the list of the current top-15 seasons of 30-point games all-time, along with the percentage of total games played that the player reached the mark. Notice that Shai’s consistency this season puts him in a class with the greatest individual scoring seasons ever, despite the fact that his per game average of 31.2 is the lowest average by 2.3 points per game of any such season.

  1.	Chamberlain – 78 (’62)		50.4ppg	97.5%
  2.	Chamberlain – 72 (’63)		44.8ppg	90.0%
  3.	Jordan – 67 (’87)		        37.1ppg	81.7%
  4.	Chamberlain – 66 (’61)		38.4ppg	83.5%
  5.	Chamberlain – 63 (’64)	 	44.8ppg	78.8%
  6.	Abdul-Jabbar – 62 (’72)        34.8ppg	76.5%
  7.	Archibald – 61 (’73)		34.0ppg	76.2%
  8.	Chamberlain – 60 (’60)		37.6ppg	83.3%
  9.	Jordan – 59 (’88) 		        35.0ppg	80.0%
  10.	McAdoo – 58 (’75)		        34.5ppg	70.7%
  11.	Baylor – 58 (’63)		        34.0ppg	72.5%
  12.	Harden – 57 (’19)		        36.1ppg	73.1%
  13.	Bryant – 56 (’06)		        35.4ppg	70.0%
  14.	Barry – 56 (’67)			35.6ppg	71.8%
  15.	Chamberlain – 53 (’66)		33.5ppg	67.1%

• The apology tour continues, and oddly enough, it’s a damn Laker again. I’d like to tell myself it’s because I tend to let some air out of the over-inflated expectations of any player joining Los Angeles, but maybe I’m just a hater. You be the judge. Talk amongst your friends. This time it’s Rui Hachimura whose play of late warrants my contrition. It’s not that I buried Hachimura in the past, it’s just that after a playoff run in which he shot 48.7% from distance, in a career in which he had only shot 34.7% from the three up until that point, right as he was headed towards free agency, I had some concerns that Rui may be giving us the full Eric Dampier treatment. For those curious, that’s when a player plays, shall we say, “inspired” basketball before free agency. In Dampier’s case, he averaged 12.3 points and 12.0 rebounds for the Warriors in ’04, signed a 7-year, $73 million contract as part of a sign-and trade to the Mavericks, and proceeded to average 5.9 points and 7.0 boards for the remainder of his career. Yes, that’s a deep cut, but what the hell else are you here for? In Rui’s case, up until his torrid shooting run in the playoffs last season, he had struggled to define himself offensively, particularly where the outside shot was concerned. If you discount his ’22 season with Washington, Hachimura had never shot above 32.8% from distance in any season. So, I think a healthy amount of skepticism regarding the sustainability of the perimeter shooting was warranted. But this season, Rui has continued to shoot the long-ball extremely well, as his 40.6% is second on the Lakers; D’Angelo Russel leads the team at 42.4%. With this continued competence has clearly come broadened confidence, as Hachimura’s 34.3% of total attempts coming from behind the arc is a nearly 10% increase over his career average of 24.3%. This ability to consistently step outside and shoot from distance is vital to Rui’s means of helping a Lakers line-up that has enough paint-dwelling bigs between LeBron’s drives and AD’s continued degradation in terms of perimeter shooting. Additionally, Rui provides defensive versatility for the Lakers who often have to hide LeBron on the opponent’s poorest offensive player, making Hachimura’s ability to guard both on the perimeter and in the paint extremely beneficial to LA’s defensive matchups. These elements of versatility that the fifth-year forward provides have actually keyed the Lakers best run of consistent play, as LA is 10-5 since head coach Darvin Ham made Rui a full-time starter back on Feb. 3^rd in a win against the Knicks. Gomennasai Rui; I had you all wrong