The Washington Wizards figured Gilbert Arenas would catch fire at some point because he almost always does. They had every reason to be encouraged at halftime, down one, because Arenas, had not a single basket in six shots. Arenas averages 25.5 points per game in the regular season. He averaged 30 against the Chicago Bulls in three games during the regular season. The Wizards just knew the points were coming, if not in bunches then at least enough to steal Game 1 here against the Bulls.
But this isn't the regular season. The Bulls decided to try to take Arenas out of the action and they did. He missed 16 of 19 shots, scored a mere nine points and simply didn't have any kind of game offensively. The result of Arenas's ineffectiveness and the dominance of a Bulls rookie named Andres Nocioni resulted in a 103-94 Chicago victory and the very first playoff-style examination Arenas has had in his career.
The tone of the postgame analysis from the Wizards' perspective, in essence, was: "Gilbert, what happened? How did the rookie from Duke, Chris Duhon, take you to school like that on defense? What are you going to do between now and Wednesday to get your shot back? Can the Wizards win a game in this series if you can't score?"
The best news of the day for the Wizards is the way Arenas responded afterward, the way he heaped praise on Duhon and the Bulls' guards, and mostly the way he seemed completely and totally unfazed without being cavalier about the whole experience.
"Me and Antawn [Jamison] cannot go 7 for 40 or whatever it was [actually it was 9 for 34] and not expect an 'L,' " Arenas said. "I'm disappointed in myself. But I got that first early foul [54 seconds into the game] and I didn't want to get that second driving. I got passive after that.
"But they were there," he said of Duhon and the Bulls' defenders. "Every time I drove they were there, waiting for me."
Antonio Davis, the Bulls' veteran forward, said as much of his team's strategy. "Listen, we respect the guy," he said. "Everybody on our team is watching the guy. To look up at the end of the game and see him with nine points . . . somebody did something."
So the question was put to Arenas: Could the Bulls take him out of this entire seven-game series with their defense?
"If they just run everybody at me . . . if they just pay attention to me," he said.
Arenas knows that's possible, but his answer indicated he knows it's highly, highly unlikely.
More likely, this was a case of Arenas having a bad night against a great defensive effort. One bad night. That's it. "I'm not worried about it," he said.
If he is worried about it, the Wizards are in trouble. If he plays the way rational people expect, he'll get 30 or so in Game 2 on Wednesday night. This isn't the NCAA tournament; it's the NBA playoffs. In these long series, somebody loses Game 1, and when things are relatively even, the losing team pores over film, fumes over the reviews of how bad it was in the losing effort, then comes back with all kinds of adjustments.
Asked what he expects from Arenas here on Wednesday, Duhon said, "He's going to be the all-star he's been all year."
There's something else that might have done in Arenas for this one game: His own tireless, almost obsessive commitment. It's quite possible no player in the NBA practices as much as Arenas. With three days off between the end of the regular season and the start of the playoff series Sunday, Arenas took 2,100 shots. He knows how many because he counts them. He went to MCI Center and shot till he dropped. Not on the practice court, but in the main gym. He had somebody turn on the lights. "I think I shot too much," he said.
There's no sense in trying to find great answers to the series in what happened Sunday. The Bulls and Wizards played a particularly entertaining game for 44 of the 48 minutes, before two teams full of playoff neophytes got tired and jittery.
The Wizards scored just 12 points in the fourth quarter, which Gordon matched all by himself. The Bulls, trying to seal the franchise's first playoff victory since 1998 when Michael Jordan hit "The Shot" to beat Utah, missed six straight free throws to keep the Wizards in the game. Both teams played about the way one would expect. The Bulls held the Wizards to 38percent shooting. Gordon had 30 points in two quarters, 18 in the second and a dozen in the fourth.
If there was one surprise it was Nocioni, the rookie and gold medal winning swingman from Argentina, who has gotten quite a bit of a reputation already for flailing his arms and legs. It was Nocioni who took the charge from Arenas and wound up flying back into Kwame Brown's right knee late in the game. Nocioni's 18 rebounds are -- get this -- an NBA record for a rookie in a playoff game. Not Wilt, not Russell, not Unseld, not Rodman. Nocioni. A rookie. And he scored 25 points, to boot. It's not Arenas the Wizards ought to be worried about for Game 2; it's Jamison who scored only 14 points and got his lunch money taken by Nocioni.
Even so, it's still a difficult series to figure. It has to be a good sign for the Wizards that Brown was so assertive and so productive (13 points, nine rebounds), that Larry Hughes clearly is not afraid of the Big Stage that is the NBA playoffs, that Brendan Haywood presents himself with a lot of tenacity around the basket, that the pace of the game and the way it was called by the officials favored the Wizards.
On the other hand, the Bulls' big men -- Tyson Chandler and Othella Harrington -- were in foul trouble from the get. Harrington played 18 minutes and Chandler played only 16, yet the Bulls out-rebounded the Wizards, 54-44. Duhon grabbed more rebounds, 10, than any Wizard. "They did what they do best," Wizards Coach Eddie Jordan said. "They get into you and they outwork you a little bit."
As the crowd of reporters around Arenas's locker thinned, he talked about figuring out how to play in the playoffs, about all the questions he asked veteran referee Dick Bavetta, about trying to figure out the right balance of passing and shooting when the opposing defense is overloading on him. "I've been on a roll for three months. I expect one down game," Arenas said. "If the same thing happens Wednesday, I'll need to reevaluate."
