Playoff Win Is First for Wizards Since ’88

The defining moment came late in the first quarter, when the Washington Wizards became more than the Big Three. Larry Hughes drew a double team and passed to an open Etan Thomas, whose two-handed dunk set the tone for the rest of the game.

The Wizards won their first playoff game in 17 years Saturday, defeating 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 eight of nine shooting, grabbed nine rebounds and led a third-quarter spurt that put the Wizards in 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. “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 victory was the first in the postseason for the Wizards since May 8, 1988, when they defeated Detroit, 106-103, in Game 4 of a first-round series. The Wizards cut the Bulls’ series lead to 2-1.

“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.”

Thomas took only five shots and scored nine points in the first two games of the series combined, and his performance Saturday 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 because of an abdominal injury.

Arenas finished with 32 points, seven rebounds and seven assists. Tyson Chandler had 15 points to lead the Bulls.