CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Zach LaVine was willing to offer up evidence, just to make sure the conspiracy theorists didn’t get any wild ideas.
After all, he was a late scratch from Monday’s game with the Hornets, executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas is on the current two-city road trip, and the trade rumors hovering over the Bulls aren’t exactly going away anytime soon.
So LaVine took the sock off his left foot to show the damage.
“I’ve got a purple toe right now,” LaVine said with a laugh. “My toe looks like the Minnesota Vikings.”
It was the fifth game LaVine missed so far this season, with the two-time All-Star suffering the injury in Saturday’s win over the Bucks.
“It felt like Brook (Lopez) stepped on it, but I’ll be OK,” LaVine said. “They tried to put a hole in it to extract the blood, but I didn’t want to infect it, so give it a few more days and see y’all in DC. I’m not going to miss two games in-a-row, so see y’all in DC.”
The Bulls play the Wizards on Wednesday.
With LaVine in street clothes and Ayo Dosunmu on the shelf with the calf strain, coach Billy Donovan started the usual suspects of Patrick Williams, Nikola Vucevic, Coby White and Josh Giddey, and then went with Julian Phillips in LaVine’s place.
The plan for LaVine was serious treatment over the next 24 hours and then see how it feels during the Wednesday morning shootaround.
“It impacted his nail, his joint, so he kind of went through shootaround (Monday) to see how he felt and couldn’t get much relief,” Donovan added. “He’s got pretty significant soreness.”
In leading the Bulls in minutes per game (33.4) this season, LaVine also leads them in scoring with 22 points per game, while shooting 49.9% from the field and 44.7% from three-point range.
So no, he wasn’t being traded. At least not yet.
Free-agent destination?
The Bulls should not be buyers come the Feb. 6 trade deadline, but the hope is someday soon they will get to a good enough place where they are looking to add serious talent to the roster.
One possible key selling point? The new up-tempo, three-point shooting style of play.
“I think it is attractive because it’s kind of moving to the modern-day NBA, but the pace we play at, the amount of threes we shoot, the amount of freedom everybody has, I think any basketball player would want to play in this system,” White said. “Who doesn’t want to play fast, get up and down, get open shots, be able to attack in transition, and then have the freedom to make plays offensively where everybody gets the ball and has opportunities? I think it has really been working for us.”
Welcome returns
The Bulls did get some size back in the middle against the Hornets, as Jalen Smith was able to return from an ankle sprain.
The 6-10 Smith only missed one game with the injury and has missed four games in total this season. He’s been Vucevic’s backup, but Donovan has experimented with playing both at the same time on several occasions this season.