The trade questions surrounding Zach LaVine aren’t about to go away anytime soon, but the more pressing questions have to do with the health of his right foot and where the Bulls guard is in the rehabilitation process.
According to coach Billy Donovan, LaVine is “projecting in a positive way.”
“He’s going to hopefully start to jump shooting, running, increase the speed,” Donovan said of what LaVine was doing. “He’s actually running at a pretty good clip straight ahead, and then moving toward next week is when they would probably start some of that running, changing direction, kind of curve running to see how he responds.
“Everything he’s done up to this time he’s still projecting in a positive way. We’ll find out more when he starts doing start, stop, cutting, that kind of stuff.”
The original timetable for LaVine was three-to-four weeks, which would put him on schedule to return by mid-January at the latest. If he gets past the cutting next week, however, and has no setbacks, they would start getting him into basketball activity and full-contact practices.
“Whatever the schedule looks like, it may be with some player development guys, it might be a low-minute run, which we do sometimes after shootarounds or after practice for some guys that maybe didn’t absorb any minutes and need to stay in shape,” Donovan said. “We have not talked about him going to Windy City (for G-League practices) or any discussions like that. Clearly, when he does pass all those tests, there’s going to be a period where they are going to want him to interact playing the game.”
That’s when things could really get interesting for LaVine.
The team has played its best basketball of the 2023-24 campaign – and maybe even in the last few seasons – and has done so with LaVine in street clothes.
To add to the drama, LaVine and his representation also made it very clear last month that they were all for the two-time All-Star being traded elsewhere.
The Sun-Times, as well as multiple media outlets, have reported there was currently no real market for LaVine, and the best way for him to change that narrative would be to not only show that he’s healthy, but also that he can play a style of basketball that is more conducive to winning games.
Donovan has reiterated over the last week that he felt LaVine would buy into sharing the ball more, as well as picking up the pace, but while that all sounds good from the coach, LaVine will have to prove it.
What will also come into play is the date of Jan. 15, when the rest of the players that signed contracts last summer will be eligible to be traded. The Bulls front office is hoping that the market will open up a bit more for them at that point.
Quick healer
Reserve Torrey Craig met with the media for the first time since he received the plantar fasciitis diagnosis that could sideline him for the next eight to 10 weeks, and let it be know that he’s a quick healer that planned on being back much quicker than that.
“Two weeks,” Craig said jokingly when asked what his own timetable was. “Nah, that’s pretty fast. We’ll see. It’s feeling better day by day, so we’ll just keep doing the recovery, keep staying with the therapy to make sure I get it back as strong as possible so I don’t have a re-injury or anything like that.”
Double vision
The Bulls had eight players score in double figures during Wednesday’s win over the Lakers, making it the third time this season they have reached that mark. That’s only been done in two previous seasons in franchise history (1966-67 and 1980-81 seasons).
