Bulls guard Lonzo Ball has started sprinting and cutting in his rehab process, and even sat on the bench Saturday for the team’s 112-102 loss to the Clippers.
Charles Rex Arbogast/AP
LOS ANGELES – Obstacles have finally been overcome.
Make that more like impediments, but still the Bulls will take a win when they can get it with Lonzo Ball and his recovery progress from three left knee surgeries.
According to coach Billy Donovan, Ball has started sprinting, cutting and jumping with no pain or setbacks, even though it’s come two months later than the original timetable.
“He’s progressed into that,” Donovan said on Saturday. “Responded well. Not with my own eyes, but some of the things the medical guys have shown me is he looks good moving. Just really happy for him personally with his progress. He’s worked hard to put himself in this position and hopefully he can continue to progress like he’s progressing.”
And that’s where things get very murky.
The final surgery he underwent – just over a year ago – was a cartilage transplant. While the sample size was very small and the science has vastly improved over the years, no NBA player had successfully returned from that procedure.
On top of that, Ball, who was on the Bulls bench for the 112-102 loss to the Clippers, still has much bigger hurdles in front of him than running and jumping. There’s this little thing of actually playing basketball again in a five-on-five situation to see how the knee holds up against contact.
When, where or how that will take place remains unknown. As does what would an 82-game regular season even look like for him. No back-to-backs, minutes restrictions, could he start? Donovan said none of those scenarios have been discussed.
“No, we have not talked about that,” Donovan said. “Everything has been his rehab and recovery and getting him back to where he can play. You’re right, this is something that’s been unpreceded. He’s been able to kind of pass every hurdle so far. We’ll see when he gets back to playing five-on-five.
“With the start of training camp (next October), there will be a pretty extensive amount of time. I don’t know when him being cleared to (play five-on-five) is, but we really haven’t discussed, ‘Hey, training camp next year, he’s back, he’s in the fold … ‘ We haven’t done any of that.”
What’s also tricky about the Ball situation is he will also be entering the final year of his four-year, $80-million deal and has the player option for $21.4 million.
He’s played in just 35 games back in the 2021-22 season, so it will be important for him to show that he is contract worthy moving forward.
Slipped away
The Bulls players would have loved to finish off the West Coast trip 4-0, but thanks to a fourth quarter in which the Clippers outscored the visiting team 29-17 all good things came to an end.
DeMar DeRozan led the Bulls with 24 points, followed by Nikola Vucevic’s 22-point, 11-rebound showing.
Even with the 3-1 trip, the Bulls (31-33) remained locked into that No. 9 seed in the Eastern Conference with 18 games to go.
“It’s a bummer because we had an opportunity to go 4-0, but we didn’t do that,” guard Ayo Dosunmu said afterwards. “We gotta just build from this, keep the momentum up.
“Our confidence is high because we’re not leaving here with a moral victory. We’re upset. We understand we can’t get it back, but we were just as good enough to be right there and win this game.”
Brief scare
Torrey Craig went down in the first half after his right foot got stepped on, but thankfully got up on his own power and returned to the game soon after.
Craig had missed 29 games since mid-December and had just returned from a right knee sprain, so there was a sigh of relief that another setback was avoided.