Bulls coach Billy Donovan offered a pessimistic update on Lonzo Ball in Saturday’s pregame meeting with reporters and speculated that a decision on the injured guard could be coming fairly soon, tweets Julia Poe of The Chicago Tribune.
Ball hasn’t played since January of 2022 due to a torn meniscus and complications from two knee surgeries. The team hasn’t talked about a cut-off date to declare Ball out for the entire season, but Donovan said that topic will be addressed if he doesn’t show significant improvement in the next few weeks.
“Once you get out of the All-Star break, I think that, with the amount of time that’s left — you’re at the end of February, you basically have all of March and a couple of weeks, if not even two weeks in April,” Donovan said. “So if you start to get to that point, I think there will probably end up being some conversations: ‘OK, what if he’s still not close to playing? What’s the plan going forward?'”
Ball acknowledged recently that sitting out the rest of the season is a possibility. He has two years remaining on the four-year contract he inked in 2021 as part of a sign-and-trade with New Orleans and will make $20.5MM next season and $21.4MM in 2024/25.
He got off to a strong start in his first season with the Bulls, averaging 13.0 points, 5.4 rebounds and 5.1 assists in 35 games and helping the team contend for the best record in the East. Chicago collapsed without him, falling to the sixth seed and suffering a first-round playoff elimination, and is just 22-26 so far this season.
Ball created some excitement among Bulls fans earlier this month when he posted videos on Instagram that showed him dunking and running on a treadmill. Although that was encouraging, he still experiences pain in his knee and hasn’t received medical clearance for full-speed running or cutting.
“He’s made some progress, but I’d be the first one to tell you that he’s nowhere near playing. He’s just not,” Donovan added. “Because he’s not running on a consistent basis right now. So I think, when he can get to that place where he can do that consistently and be able to come back the next day and do it again, do it again and do it again, I think you’ll feel a little bit more optimistic.”
He will wait til his contract year.
Lonzo Ball is a very solid role player when he’s healthy. I think he should take the rest of the year off to get his body back in order and just comeback healthy at the start of next season. He might be a guy that you only play 28-30 minutes a game.
Chicago not paying him to be a role player
To Ball’s credit he wasn’t playing like a role player either.
He was getting the ball out and leading fastbreaks, providing excellent perimeter defense, was able to guard multiple defenders, facilitated the offense extremely well getting others involved and keeping everyone happy, was able to space the floor with his perimeter shooting, and rebounded well for a point guard, which led to fastbreaks, increasing the team’s pace, and often led to easy offense..
Ball was an extremely pivotal part to the Bull’s offense, and we saw the difference he made in and out of their lineup. With Ball, they were easily a top 4 contender in the East, without him they were barely a playoff team.
Maybe not from a leadership standpoint, but Ball actually had a similar impact as when Chris Paul joined the Suns.
They both knew their roles, and were the perfect compliments to their teammates helping facilitate their offense and finding ways to get everyone going..
Lonzo Bum
I love his games,but his injuried history make me sick
This has Brandon Roy written all over it.
Brandon Roy’s story is exactly why I roll my eyes when fans whine about players taking rest days for load management and not playing through injuries.
He hasn’t been that injury prone yet
Brandon Roy had no cartilage in his knees because of injury in college…his short career had nothing to do with not resting in the pros. He was doomed to a short NBA career before it began
this doesnt feel like a injury that will ever heal properly
Poor bulls lol. Were they ever good before Jordan?
Made the playoffs in their first year, and nearly the finals in ‘75, lost to the eventual champions.
Lonzo is gonna be out the next 3 years just like jonathan isaac
Lonzo is gonna be out the next 3 years just like jonathan isaac
Lonzo is gonna be out the next 3 years just like jonathan isaac
The Bulls need to move on and reset the team once again.
As how this team is built they will never win a Championship and most likely will not even make the playoffs, so it is time to trade and rebuild again.
Ball isn’t playing this year and most likely will not play again, so reset and build for a better team.
Not that easy because they traded their 2023 1st round pick (Top 5 protected) to Orlando in the Vucevic trade.
Lonzo still won’t be ready at this time next year. Perhaps the Bulls should explore a Fred Van Vleet trade.
Thought Daddy said that he would be the GOAT?
Honestly at this point I’m just gonna consider his injury as career ending. I’d trade him for a second round pick just to get him off the books. He’s good. He’s a great defender. But this was supposed to be a nothing injury, they clearly don’t know what’s going on, they haven’t found anything that would be causing all this, and now everyone gets their hopes up whenever we learn the doctors will go in and clean up his knee. Which…of course isn’t going to do anything. We will go through this again next summer.
I have to question if Lonzo Ball is just experiencing tendonitis/jumpers knee for the first time in his life and he’s afraid to test the knee at all. Because this is the weirdest injury in sports that we have scene in a long time.
Why didn’t the Bulls just get a roster exemption for Ball at some point and just add someone to fill in like the Celtics did with Gallinari? Did they really think it was gonna improve? And why did the idiots let him go back to his own DR.’s after they screwed up the first operation? It’s no wonder the Bulls and White Sox Medical and training staffs are the worst in professional sports. They suck.