It may feel like a pick-up game out there come Saturday night with some of Billy Donovan’s rotations, but the coach doesn’t have a lot of options. The team did practice on Friday, getting work for new faces like Stanley Johnson and Alfonzo McKinnie, and there’s still hope that Alex Caruso (hamstring) will be a go.
MIAMI – Sunny and 82 goes a long way in helping squash some self-pity.
The Bulls needed every degree of that on Friday, as the team went through a practice at the FTX Arena short-handed, as well as playbook CliffsNotes close in hand for a few participants.
“What’s happening is once something happens with the test, they kind of put them in the protocols, but there’s all this retesting that goes on and other stuff,” coach Billy Donovan said, before he started snickering in disbelief. “So sometimes it gets a little crazy … yeah, it’s been a lot.”
That’s an understatement.
Donovan woke up to yet another phone call he didn’t want to receive on Thursday, told that forward Derrick Jones Jr. would be the fifth Bulls player headed to the NBA’s coronavirus health and safety protocol in the last week.
Jones joined Javonte Green, DeMar DeRozan, Coby White and Matt Thomas in the protocol, and combined with Patrick Williams (wrist surgery) and Alex Caruso (hamstring) that left the Bulls seven players down from the opening day roster.
The NBA did allow two hardship exemptions, with the Bulls signing Stanley Johnson and former Marshall High School player Alfonzo McKinnie. Don’t expect either of them to just sport the warm-up outfit Saturday night when the Bulls play the Heat.
Following the practice, several assistant coaches, as well as a few of the healthy reserves, stayed after with McKinnie and Johnson to go through the offensive sets and what they want to see on defense.
The Bulls had Johnson in camp for the fall and preseason games, so he was going through more of a refresher, but McKinnie had a lot of catching up to do both on Friday, as well as Saturday when he’ll get more of the package fed to him.
“I would envision one, if not both, of them playing,” Donovan said. “The thing we’ve got to do is get them up to speed, especially with the offense. Stanley, after I talked to [executive vice president of basketball operations] Arturas [Karnisovas], I felt comfortable with that one just because he spent fall camp with us and the preseason, so just from a terminology standpoint it’s like, ‘OK, this guy has a little of a handle on it.’
“McKinnie doesn’t have any, so we’re going to have to kind of script those guys. With the power forward position, with Javonte, Patrick and now Derrick we have no one there. We can slide Troy [Brown Jr.] down there, and we’ll be pretty small. Stanley is a big, strong guy, and McKinnie has some length, but how they’re going to fit in, it’s a pick-up game. It’s going to be interesting.”
Donovan’s biggest anxiety between Saturday morning and tip-off? Another phone call.
The coach did ask Karnisovas and head trainer Chip Schaefer about the possibility of the game being postponed if one or two more players have to go in the protocol, and that doesn’t sound like a scenario that’s in play.
“They didn’t think we were there yet,” Donovan said. “I have not heard anything like, ‘Hey, one more guy goes we’re done.’ I think they’re going to try and get us through. The thing that’s crazy is these guys were all pretty disciplined and diligent about getting vaccinated and doing all that stuff. Chip is dealing with the league, so is Arturas. I just get the feedback from them on what they have to do to get back with our team.”
One positive for the Bulls? Caruso did ramp up his activity in the Friday practice, and if he has no setbacks and gets through Saturday’s workout, he could return to the rotation in some capacity.
“He did all the running stuff with us, the cutting stuff,” Donovan said of Caruso. “I think they’re going to start ramping him up more, but he went from doing nothing to being out there with us [Friday], so I think he’s getting better. I think his decision will be based on what they do [Saturday].”
