Thomas conjures win for Wizards

WASHINGTON – The game-defining moment came late in the first quarter, when the Washington Wizards became more than just the Big Three. Larry Hughes drew a double team and passed to a wide-open Etan Thomas, whose two-handed dunk raised the roof and set the tone for things to come.

The Wizards picked up their first playoff victory in 17 years Saturday, beating the Chicago Bulls 117-99 with a big-man attack notably absent in the first two games of the series.

Thomas scored 20 points on 8-for-9 shooting, grabbed nine rebounds and led a third-quarter spurt that put his team control, supplementing an attack that had come to rely too heavily on Hughes, Gilbert Arenas and Antawn Jamison.

“He was the X-factor,” Chicago guard Ben Gordon said of Thomas. “He really came in for them today and had an uncharacteristic game. Usually you see Arenas, Jamison or Hughes doing something, but he was very big.”

The win was the first in the postseason for the Wizards since May 8, 1988, when they beat Detroit 106-103 in Game 4 of a first-round series. Of immediate concern for the Wizards is that they cut the Bulls’ series lead to 2-1, with Game 4 in Washington on Monday.

“We were very desperate,” said Brendan Haywood, who added eight points and nine rebounds. “It’s not impossible to come back from 0-3, but it’s definitely very hard. We would have had to pull out our Boston Red Sox tapes.”

The Bulls had taken a 2-0 series lead with their own X-factors – Gordon and Andres Nocioni seemed unstoppable in Game 1, and Kirk Hinrich made nearly everything he shot in Game 2 – but the over-the-top hero this time was a player known as much for his long dreadlocks and his book of poems called “More Than an Athlete.”

Thomas took only five shots and scored nine points in the first two games of the series combined, and his third-game performance nearly tripled his 7.1-point regular-season average. He signed a six-year, $36.6 million contract last summer but missed the first 32 games of the season with an abdominal injury.

“We have a special group in the Big Three, and I’m in the supporting cast,” Thomas said. “Tonight, they needed me. I had to be ready just to finish. … We can’t rely on them totally for everything.”

Arenas finished with 32 points, seven rebounds and seven assists. Hughes had 21 points and seven rebounds, and Jamison had 21 points and eight rebounds.