Back with a bust

CHICAGO — The good news for the Washington Wizards after their 103-94 loss to the Chicago Bulls last night in Game 1 of the best-of-7 series at United Center is that Gilbert Arenas and Antawn Jamison don’t figure to shoot a combined 9-for-34 again.

The bad news is that the Wizards’ sporadic defense looks fully capable of allowing players on the banged-up Bulls to appear better than they really are.

The Bulls, who are playing without starters Eddy Curry and Luol Deng, got huge games from a pair of rookies. Forward Andres Nocioni scored 25 points and had 18 rebounds — the most rebounds by a rookie in a playoff game — and guard Ben Gordon scored 30 points off the bench.

Larry Hughes led the Wizards with 31 points, a career-high for the guard in the playoffs, surpassing the 14 points he had in 1999 with Philadelphia. However, Hughes had his troubles in the second half when the Bulls’ harassing defense held him to just 1-for-8 shooting.

Kwame Brown scored all of his 13 points in the first quarter. He had to be helped from the game late in the fourth quarter after bruising his right knee. Following the game he said he thought he’d be ready to play Wednesday.

“They did what they do best,” Wizards coach Eddie Jordan said of the Bulls, who limited the Wizards to just one basket in the final 4:38. “They get into you and they outwork you. I’m not going to kill our guys for not rebounding and not competing. As for Gilbert and Antawn, they never got on track. I believe they will on Wednesday.”

Down 94-92 with just under five minutes to play, the Bulls guaranteed themselves a 1-0 series lead by outscoring the Wizards 9-2 the rest of the way. The Bulls held the Wizards to just 12 points in the fourth quarter.

Arenas finished with nine points, eight assists and eight rebounds but shot just 3-for-19 from the floor. The 22,655 fans occasionally serenaded the first-time All-Star with chants of “overrated.” Jamison, who began the game 1-for-8, finished 6-for-15 and had 14 points.

The Wizards, who were outrebounded 54-44, remained upbeat after the game.

“The game got away from us in the last five minutes,” said Arenas, who averaged more than 30 points against the Bulls in the regular season. “We’ll be ready on Wednesday. If I don’t score, I don’t score. That means somebody else is open. That means I gotta dish the ball, get more rebounds and do whatever it takes.”

Much of the credit for limiting Arenas to such a poor shooting performance goes to another Bulls rookie, guard Chris Duhon. He did a good job of funneling Arenas into the teeth of the Chicago defense.

And while doing that Duhon still managed to finish with seven points, six assists and 10 rebounds.

“Duhon was not the only guy on him” Chicago coach Scott Skiles said. “I thought he did a really nice job. But we don’t want to take too much credit for Gilbert’s performance. He had a great year. I don’t know how much tonight was because of us. Overall I thought our guards were really scrappy.”

To draw even in the series Wednesday, the Wizards will need to tighten their defense against the Bulls, who are 25-2 this season when they score at least 100 points.

“We let Gordon get open shots,” Jordan said. “Our defense is what it is. We’re just not very good in a halfcourt game.”