Bulls guard Zach LaVine detailed his left knee issue 10 days ago in Miami, insisting that he was basically day-to-day the rest of the season.
Nothing to panic about, but that was just the reality for the All-Star guard.
His reality hit yet again on Saturday.
After an off-day, and then taking Friday’s practice off, LaVine and the Bulls were hoping that he would get over the latest bout of discomfort in the knee in time for the game with the Cavaliers, but that just wasn’t the case.
“It’s going to be something that we have to manage,” coach Billy Donovan said. “When a player feels like he’s got discomfort and he shares that with me after the Detroit game, you know we wanted to see how he would feel after the game.
“It’s not one of these things where we’ve mapped out, ‘This is what we’re doing, we’re sitting him out in this back-to-back, we’re sitting him here.’ It’s got to be almost day-to-day. I don’t know if it’s concerning or not just the fact that he had two days. It’s just that there’s some discomfort there. Listen, I’m not in every single conversation with those guys. I talk to Zach, I talk to medical, and then get the update, but the feeling was it was better for him to take this game and see where he’s at [Sunday] and where he’s at out West.”
What Donovan was adamant about was that the knee was not regressing. LaVine has battled with discomfort and fluid on the knee for months, but when he went to Los Angeles before the All-Star Break and met with specialists, the overall conclusion was the knee wouldn’t get worse.
The problem was it also wasn’t going to get better.
“Everything I’ve gotten from the doctors has been they feel totally comfortable with him playing,” Donovan said. “There’s obviously a team of doctors involved in this. One of the doctors involved is the guy that handled his ACL surgery [back in 2017], obviously our doctors here, our medical staff, there’s a lot of people involved that are making these decisions, and everybody feels comfortable that him playing is OK. It’s not necessarily regressing. It’s just something he’s going to have to manage and deal with over the course of the season.”
LaVine did say that he would have to deal with the knee later – meaning in the offseason – but never detailed what that meant exactly.
The other point he stressed was making sure his priorities were well understood. LaVine will be a free agent this summer, but has made it clear to his teammates and the organization that sitting and missing games will be done for the betterment of the team, and not his contract situation.
“If it was about worrying about a contract, there are people who shut that stuff down immediately,” LaVine said recently. “I have a big responsibility here with the team, my teammates, my coaches, the city of Chicago. I take a lot of pride in that. It means something to me. And I hope people understand that I’m going out here and definitely not putting myself first here in this situation.
“I don’t get my contract right now. I’m not a free agent until the end of the season. It’s pretty black and white to me.”
Schedule blues
The second-half schedule gauntlet will continue for the Bulls this upcoming week. After playing the Kings on Monday, they take on four straight playoff teams, and three of the games will be on the road.
Toronto is the lone home game, while the Bulls will be the visiting team for games in Utah, Phoenix and Milwaukee.