TORONTO – Lonzo Ball has been doing his best petitioning, and while his minutes continue to go up there was only so far that the Bulls medical staff will allow the point guard to go.
“Every stage they’ve wanted to see how he’s managed the minutes along the way, so it started at 16 then up to 22, then we got to 24, and as long as he feels good and he’s responding, that’s the biggest thing,” coach Billy Donovan said of Ball. “How does he look the next day and if he does have any swelling or soreness the next day, any difficulty, then they would start to monitor his minutes. But everything he’s done up to this moment with the restrictions that have been on him has been positive.”
That included a first quarter on Friday against the Raptors that went a season-high 10 minutes and 34 seconds.
What Donovan would say is playing in back-to-backs is still off the table, but by the end of the season who knows what Ball will be doing. Maybe he plays in back-to-backs and maybe the minutes do get up to the 30-minute mark.
Ball is coming off a left knee surgery in which no other professional athlete has returned from, and the last thing the organization wants to do is have a major setback for him in a contract year.
That included making sure to protect Ball from himself in some instances.
“I’ve just tried to go one step at a time,” Donovan said. “With him being out as long as he was out, ‘OK, 16 minutes, can he do this?’ And he did it. Then it got to 20 or so, OK, he did that. Now it’s 24. So I’m not ruling anything out with him just because of the way he’s progressed, but there’s going to be a period of time when they’ll want to see what he looks like in those minutes.”
All-Star blues
Donovan has remained protective of his players and that included his disappointment in both Zach LaVine and Nikola Vucevic being left off the Eastern Conference All-Star Team when the reserves were named on Thursday.
“I was not with Vooch when he was an All-Star in Orlando, but if you look at Zach in his time here and he was an All-Star, certainly he has played at that level no question,” Donovan said. “And at least things you hear, maybe not lately with Vooch’s offense, he hasn’t shot the ball at the same rate, but for a good portion of this season his numbers were up there, as good as they’ve ever been in his career, so you’d have to say both those guys should have had strong consideration.”
Moving closer
Torrey Craig, who last played on Dec. 30 because of a nerve injury in his knee and then an ankle sprain, was a full participant in the Friday shootaround.
That doesn’t mean he’s ready to return just yet, however. According to Donovan he needs a few five-on-five, full-contact scrimmages with the player development people to see where he’s at conditioning-wise.
Back to Zach
Zach LaVine missed his second consecutive game for the birth of his third child, but Donovan was still unclear if he would be back in time for Sunday’s three-game road trip finale in Detroit.
Because it’s an afternoon game against the Pistons, it’s likely that he won’t be back in time, but the Bulls were in a holding pattern for that decision.