Chicago Bulls' Ayo Dosunmu dedicated to leadership despite season-ending injury: ‘I want to continue to grow'

Chicago Tribune

05-03-2025

Ayo Dosunmu still isn't sure exactly when he got hurt.
At some point in the last two years, the Chicago Bulls guard suffered a fracture along the back side of his left shoulder. Dosunmu can't point to a game — or even a day, or a week, or a month — when the initial breakage occurred. But over the next two seasons, his shoulder began to slip out of its socket during games.
Sure, it hurt, but the pain was always manageable — and by the next day, it was basically gone. Dosunmu, 25, played through at least five dislocations, each time feeling confident that his body would bounce back. And that worked. Until it didn't.
Two weeks ago in New York City, Dosunmu's shoulder slid out of place again. It hurt. Again. And the next day, for the first time, the pain didn't go away. It hurt when he slept. It hurt when he opened and closed his fist. Dosunmu sat out the next three games, hoping rest would fix the problem. It didn't.
Dosunmu tried to play through the pain one final time in a home game against the Toronto Raptors. Within 48 hours, an MRI had identified the fracture and the need for season-ending surgery.
'It is kind of bizarre just knowing that there was a fracture there,' Dosunmu said. 'It was something that I played on — and I think I could have continued to play on. But I don't know, for whatever reason the last time, it probably knocked it out in a different way, because it was a different pain than I previously felt.'
This is the first time that Dosunmu has ever needed surgery. The guard's durability has been one of his strongest traits in Chicago, where he had missed only 12 games through his first three seasons in the league.
Despite its early ending, this season was a success for Dosunmu. He cemented himself as an integral anchor for the offense, which was able to fundamentally transform its pace and style in transition due to Dosunmu's ability to command the open floor.
The Bulls hoped to utilize this final stretch of the season to develop players like Dosunmu, leaning into the young core following the trade of Zach LaVine. But for the guard, the greatest frustration is the missed opportunity to lead.
Dosunmu wants to build a better future for the Bulls. And at the start of this season, he made a pact with teammate Coby White to do just that — invest in their leadership as the young faces of the team's future.
This year was going to be different. They were going to be different. More accountable. More vocal. They would challenge each other and listen when they were challenged. If a teammate called them out, they wouldn't argue. Even if this wasn't a winning season, they would build a culture for the Bulls to carry through future seasons.
This wasn't new for Dosunmu. His father began encouraging him to use his voice as a fifth grader. At every turn of his career, Dosunmu has begun as the youngest player on the roster — a freshman playing varsity for Westinghouse College Prep, a freshman starter for Illinois, a rookie assuming the point guard position for the Bulls — but that never kept him quiet.
Photos: Cleveland Cavaliers 139, Chicago Bulls 117 on Tuesday, March 4, 2025
'My whole life, I've just been blessed to have people that push me to be a leader,' Dosunmu told the Tribune. 'When I got to the NBA, coach (Billy Donovan) saw in me that I could be a leader for this team. It was like, 'Wow. This thing that I always practiced, it's real now.' So I definitely feel comfortable in that role.'
Dosunmu is a curious person. That curiosity isn't an accident — it's a practice. He annotates self-help books — most recently 'The Power of Now' by Eckhart Tolle — to create a framework for his own self-talk. He spends daily time with a devotional book to shift his perspective back toward his faith. In January, he started up a Bible study with his grandma.
This curiosity informs the way Dosunmu crafted his voice on the Bulls. His teammates describe him as a 'cerebral' leader. He knows when to pull teammates aside to administer a little tough love, when to step into a huddle in the locker room to inject life into a dejected team.
'He's always led by example,' White told the Tribune. 'He was a guy you knew that was gonna always go out there, compete, no matter how that game looked, he was never gonna throw in the towel. He was always gonna play his hardest. But I feel like this year, he's taking a huge step in using his voice and becoming his own.'
Dosunmu's final basket of the season was also one of his proudest.
At that point, Dosunmu knew it was probably his final game of the season. Everything hurt. It was a struggle just to get his left arm above his head. But his right arm was still working — which was enough for Dosunmu to work with in overtime against the Toronto Raptors, when he launched himself into a passing lane to pick off a lazy pass.
Sprinting into the open court, Dosunmu dribbled once with his left hand before cradling the ball in his right, leaping skyward and crushing a dunk through the rim.
It hurt, but it was worth it — a type of hard-nosed mentality that Dosunmu hopes to keep instilling into the Bulls from the bench through the rest of the season.
'I try to embody that being from Chicago,' Dosunmu said. 'I want to continue to grow and continue to build this here. It's not going to happen overnight. That's how you build greatness and that's how you become one of the elite teams in the NBA.'