Chicago Bulls

Lonzo Ball's first season with the Chicago Bulls was going well. Through 35 games, he was averaging 13 points, 5.4 rebounds and 5.1 assists per contest. He was shooting a career-best 42.3 percent from the field. And, most importantly, he was helping the team win.

The Bulls were 27-13 after a loss to the Golden State Warriors on Jan. 14. That was the final game that Ball played during the 2021-22 campaign, as he went on to miss the rest of the season because of a left knee injury that eventually required him to undergo surgery to repair a torn meniscus. Then, Ball had a setback in his recovery.

It seems that Ball still may not be completely healed. David Kaplan of ESPN 1000 (h/t Daniel Greenberg) reported that the Bulls' front office have "serious concerns" regarding Ball's knee ailment and why he's still enduring pain when he tries to ramp up his activity. So that isn't an encouraging sign for Chicago.

When healthy, Ball is a great fit in the Bulls' backcourt. But they may need to start thinking about contingency plans this offseason in case the 24-year-old isn't ready for the beginning of the 2022-23 season (or even if he misses more time).

Chicago already has a lot of decisions to make in the near future. Zach LaVine is set to be an unrestricted free agent, so it's possible he won't return to the Bulls. Derrick Jones Jr. is also going to be a UFA.

If Ball remains hurt and LaVine doesn't re-sign, Chicago's backcourt mix will consist of Ayo Dosunmu, Coby White and Alex Caruso. Are the Bulls confident in that trio to be their core players, or could they try to bring another guard or two into the fold?

Jalen Brunson will likely be the top point guard on the free-agent market, but he's likely to land a sizable deal after his breakout season with the Dallas Mavericks. So it may be unlikely that Chicago makes a move that big, especially if it can bring back LaVine.

Maybe a point guard such as Ricky Rubio or Tyus Jones could be somebody the Bulls look to sign, especially if Ball's health doesn't improve much over the summer. However, that all depends on what other moves Chicago makes to construct its roster for the upcoming season.

Another possibility is the Bulls will look to the 2022 NBA draft to add depth in the backcourt. They own the No. 18 overall selection, so there could be some intriguing prospects for them to consider at that point.

It's hard to know what Chicago will do until there's more clarity regarding Ball's recovery. Because if he can get fully healthy and return to the level of play he showcased early last season, then the Bulls likely won't need to address the point guard position this offseason, as they'll already be set.

So for now, Chicago may just have to wait to see how this situation develops. But if Ball doesn't soon show some progress, that could impact the team's decision-making for the near future.

Chicago Bulls point guard Lonzo Ball's knee injury is reportedly causing "serious concerns" within the franchise.

Chicago media personality David Kaplan stated that the lack of progress in Ball's recovery has become unnerving for Chicago.

Ball was sidelined starting in January when he underwent surgery on his left knee. The initial timetable projected he would return within two months, but he suffered a setback in his recovery near the end of the 2021-22 regular season.

The Bulls then announced he would miss the remainder of the campaign because he'd continued to "experience pain with high-level physical activity."

"He will continue daily treatment and rehabilitation in preparation for the 2022-23 season," the team said.

The 24-year-old UCLA product averaged 13.0 points, 5.4 rebounds and 5.1 assists across 35 games in his first season with the Bulls before the injury.

Ayo Dosunmu, Coby White and Alex Caruso were among the guards who helped fill the backcourt void for Chicago. Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan also took on more responsibility leading the offense.

Ball has found a nice comfort zone following his move to the Bulls, and the team will hope he can pick up where he left off next season.

In an offseason relatively light on big-name free agents, Zach LaVine's future will be a major focus. The safe assumption has been that the Chicago Bulls, who can offer him a five-year, $213 million deal to stay, would get a deal done to keep the two-time All-Star.

They could continue to build around their core of LaVine, DeMar DeRozan, Lonzo Ball and Nikola Vucevic, which just helped the franchise return to the playoffs for the first time since 2017.

LaVine's comments at last month's exit interview, though, were non-committal. And ESPN's Brian Windhorst suggested on Tuesday's edition of The Hoop Collective podcast that executives around the league think there's an increased chance LaVine could leave Chicago and that the Portland Trail Blazers could be a potential destination.

The Blazers—which removed Joe Cronin's interim tag and named him the full-time general manager on Tuesday—are the kind of team that, on paper, would find LaVine attractive.

Cronin has made it clear that after shutting down Damian Lillard to address an abdominal injury and trading CJ McCollum to New Orleans at the deadline, he's eager to get Portland back into the playoffs this year and not embark on a multi-year rebuild. He wants to maximize the rest of Lillard's prime rather than trading the superstar point guard to start over.

At 6'5", LaVine has more size than McCollum or Anfernee Simons, the latter of whom emerged as a capable scoring guard this year and got a handful of Most Improved Player votes. At 27, LaVine is closer in age to Lillard (31) than the 22-year-old Simons, making it more likely he hits his peak years while Lillard is still one of the league's top point guards.

And Lillard and LaVine played together last summer at the Tokyo Olympics, winning a gold medal for Team USA.

There’s Smoke, But Is There Fire?

In short, the Blazers are exactly the type of team you'd expect LaVine's powerful and influential agency, Klutch Sports Group, to float as a potential threat to sign him if Chicago doesn't pony up for the full five-year max.

From Portland's end, a serious pursuit of LaVine is extremely unlikely and bordering on completely unrealistic.

Since the Blazers' flurry of deadline moves to unload McCollum, Norman Powell and Robert Covington, a figure of $60 million in cap space has become a talking point around their offseason plans, but that's not their reality.

The most space they could open up is closer to $48 million. To do that, they'd have to let their two key free agents, Simons and starting center Jusuf Nurkic (also a Klutch client, for what it's worth), walk for nothing and waive all of their non-guaranteed salary, including Josh Hart, the centerpiece of the McCollum trade.

They could come up with enough money to fit the $36.6 starting salary of a four-year, $157 million max deal for LaVine if they really wanted to, but it would involve a level of gutting the team that simply doesn't add up with the greater plan for the rest of Lillard's peak.

In fact, it's much more likely the Blazers don't go into the offseason with any cap space at all. They have a $20.9 million trade exception from the McCollum trade that they'd have to renounce if they went under the cap.

They also have the partially guaranteed $19.3 million contract of veteran guard Eric Bledsoe, who didn't get bought out after the trade deadline due to his ability to be used in trades closer to the draft. Their plan, which Lillard is fully on board with and has discussed in detail, appears to be using these exceptions to make roster upgrades, along with re-signing Simons and Nurkic.

The types of players they could land to fill their needs could include the likes of Detroit's Jerami Grant (widely rumored to be their top target at the deadline), Indiana's Myles Turner, Toronto's OG Anunoby or Atlanta's John Collins.

In other words, starting-quality frontcourt or perimeter players making salaries in the $18-24 million per year range—not big names like LaVine, who would command max-level free-agent money.

Portland's lottery fate will also go a long way in determining what they do this offseason. Its ability to make moves this summer took a hit when New Orleans made the playoffs after trading for McCollum, costing them the second lottery pick they had banked on.

The Trail Blazers' own selection has the sixth-best odds to be No. 1 overall, and they have a 37.2 chance of drafting within the top four, per Tankathon.com.

If that happens and they're in a position to take one of the top prospects in the draft like Gonzaga's Chet Holmgren, Duke's Paolo Banchero and Auburn's Jabari Smith, they will have an infusion of young talent to stay competitive beyond Lillard's years.

If they don't move up or, in a worst-case scenario, move down, it becomes easier to picture them trading the pick for some higher-end veteran talent.

The Blazers roster will look a lot different next year than it did in one of the most tumultuous seasons in recent franchise history, but don't expect LaVine to be a part of it.

Zach LaVine's return may not be in the bag for the Chicago Bulls as the two-time All-Star approaches unrestricted free agency.

ESPN's Brian Windhorst reported at the 22:00 mark of his Hoop Collective podcast Tuesday that the initial impression around the NBA was that LaVine was "off the market." Now, there isn't as much certainty that he'll stay in Chicago.

Windhorst added that the Portland Trail Blazers have "popped up" as a potential landing spot.

While LaVine hasn't stated he intends to leave the Bulls, Windhorst said recent comments the guard made changed the perception about what he'll do this summer.

"I plan to enjoy free agency," he told reporters. "We're going to have to experience A through Z without making any fast decisions. I think that's something me and [agent Rich Paul] are going to go through and experience."

The Blazers could be in play for a marquee free agent such as LaVine. Spotrac projects Portland could have as much as $48.4 million in salary-cap space, with much of that money coming by renouncing cap holds for Joe Ingles, Jusuf Nurkic and Anfernee Simons.

Interim general manager Joe Cronin traded CJ McCollum, Larry Nance Jr., Robert Covington and Norman Powell ahead of the trade deadline in February. Rather than tearing it all down, however, ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reported the Blazers had every intention of building another contender around Damian Lillard.

The overarching question is whether chasing LaVine is a worthwhile pursuit for the organization.

LaVine can earn as much as $212.3 million over five years from the Bulls. Another team can put $157.4 million over four years on the table.

Either way, that's a lot of money to pay a player who, while very good, isn't an elite star. In five years with the Bulls, he's averaging 24.4 points and 4.4 assists and shooting 38.9 percent from beyond the arc.

LaVine might also be undergoing surgery this offseason to address a lingering knee injury.

By pairing LaVine with Lillard, Portland might risk putting itself exactly where it was a few years go. The Lillard-McCollum partnership helped guide the Blazers to eight straight playoff trips, but only once did they get past the conference semifinals.

The franchise was a consistent winner in the regular season but had a firm ceiling in the postseason. Considering Lillard will turn 32 in July and missed 53 games because of an abdominal injury, going big-game hunting in free agency might be an example of Cronin throwing good money after bad.

If you've been following Scottie Pippen's quotes over the last year, you know two things:

1. He feels he was underappreciated as a basketball player.
2. He largely blames the attention given to Michael Jordan for the reason he was overlooked.

The Hall of Famer once again threw shade in the direction of his former teammate and the media, saying it was Jordan's fault he never won a Defensive Player of the Year award during his career.

“I think they were too busy watching Michael," Pippen told Trash Talk Production (around the 45-second mark). 

Jordan won Defensive Player of the Year in 1987-88, Pippen's first year with the Bulls, but it's hard to see His Airness as the main reason Pippen fell short over his career.

It would be more accurate to blame a general bias in the award's history to favor big men. After Jordan's win in 1987-88, there were only two non-bigs (Gary Payton in 1995-96 and Ron Artest in 2003-04) to take home the DPOY over the next 26 years.

Only in more recent seasons have perimeter players gotten a fairer shake when it comes to the award. 

So while it's fair that Pippen is upset about his lack of recognition—it's frankly jarring that he was never given his proper credit for his defensive brilliance—it's hard to blame this one on his more beloved teammate. 

The Chicago Bulls' season came to an end at the hands of the Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday, a first-round playoff loss to the defending champions that was a formality with Zach LaVine, Lonzo Ball and Alex Caruso sidelined.

LaVine, the two-time All-Star guard who has blossomed in recent years in Chicago, missed the decisive Game 5 after entering health and safety protocols. Now, both he and the Bulls are facing an offseason that will define the next era for president Arturas Karnisovas and general manager Marc Eversley.

Two major things are happening at the same time with LaVine. His left knee, which has bothered him all season and hampered what appeared to be an All-NBA-caliber campaign, is apparently in much worse shape than anyone has let on. The Chicago Sun-Times' Joe Cowley reported on Wednesday that offseason surgery on that knee is in the cards.

Just two months after that surgery, free agency will open and LaVine will be one of the biggest names to hit the market. The Bulls will have to decide whether they want to commit north of $200 million over five years to build around him long-term.

For all the concerns about the health of a knee that LaVine will have now had two surgeries on (he missed over a year with a torn left ACL earlier in his career, in Minnesota), and about what giving him that kind of money will do to the Bulls' long-term roster outlook, letting him go isn't really an option.

Karnisovas and Eversley inherited LaVine from the previous front-office regime when they took over in the spring of 2020, and at that point, there may have been some doubt about whether the one-time centerpiece of the still-questionable 2017 Jimmy Butler trade was a long-term building block. Over the past two seasons, even with the knee troubles, LaVine has played his way out of that doubt, getting better at every aspect of his game and proving himself worthy of franchise-player status.

The Bulls also invested a lot, both financially and in future draft picks, in surrounding him with upgraded talent, starting with last deadline's surprise trade for center Nikola Vucevic and continuing in the offseason with big deals for Ball, Caruso and DeMar DeRozan. When everyone was healthy earlier this season, the Bulls looked like the best team in the Eastern Conference.

That health is a major caveat going forward, especially with Ball not returning in the original six-to-eight-week timeline after undergoing knee surgery in January and ultimately missing the rest of the season. His knee will no doubt continue to be a major concern. 

LaVine, meanwhile, only missed 15 games this season, playing through the knee issues but visibly wearing down as the season reached the finish line (check the noticeable dropoff in his pre- and post-All-Star efficiency splits). But Wednesday's report about his upcoming knee surgery offered hope that it isn't a degenerative condition that will affect him going forward.

The optics of not paying up to re-sign LaVine after he played much of the year hurt would also be a reputational hit the Bulls organization can't afford to take. In just under two years, Karnisovas and Eversley were able to turn around the perception of a franchise that for two decades had trouble attracting big-time free agents despite playing in the third-biggest market in the country and a highly desirable city.

LaVine was a major part of that effort, helping to recruit DeRozan in free agency. The previous front-office group was widely distrusted around the league because of its handling of high-profile stars like Butler and Derrick Rose over the years; the new regime has already erased much of that. If it was to turn around, after LaVine played hurt in a contract year to keep them in the playoff hunt, and not hold up its end of the bargain, all that newly built goodwill would fly out the window. 

The Boston Celtics made that mistake with Isaiah Thomas in 2017, trading him for Kyrie Irving after Thomas had put up an All-NBA season for them on a bad hip. That stuck with players and agents around the league, with Anthony Davis' father saying in 2019 that his son didn't want to be traded to Boston because of its handling of Thomas. 

LaVine, by the way, is a fellow client of Rich Paul and Klutch Sports, who also represents Ball, the Bulls' second-biggest free agent of last summer. Is it really worth risking relations with one of the league’s most influential agencies?

The cost of keeping LaVine, even at a max, is less than it would have been had he made an All-NBA team. He won't qualify for a super-max, which would have paid him even more. The over $40 million per year he's expected to make on a new deal is more than double his last contract, a well-below-market annual salary of $19.5 million. 

Is that a lot for an athletic guard with knee issues? Sure. But that's the going rate for stars, and the Bulls don't really have a way of getting another one if they let him walk. They already pushed all their chips in for DeRozan and Vucevic, and this core showed considerable promise earlier in the season before the injuries. If they don't bring back LaVine, and pay him whatever it costs, they might as well just blow it up and rebuild. Spoiler: There won't be much of an appetite to do that just one year after they completely overhauled the roster for the first respectable team they've fielded in five years.

The Bulls are far from being in a great place, as the second half of the season and the playoffs have shown. The front office will have to make some hard decisions this offseason about Vucevic (going into the final year of his contract) and youngsters Patrick Williams and Coby White. One decision that should be easy is keeping LaVine, even at a high price.

Chicago Bulls star Zach LaVine has entered the league's health and safety protocols.

The Bulls are scheduled to face the Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday in Game 5 of the best-of-seven series. Milwaukee holds a 3-1 lead and can clinch the first-round matchup with a win.

This is another setback for LaVine, who sat out 15 games this season with knee and back injuries during a campaign of attrition for the Bulls that has seen Lonzo Ball, Alex Caruso, Patrick Williams and others miss significant time.

LaVine is one of Chicago's go-to options and made his second straight All-Star Game this season.

He averaged 24.4 points, 4.6 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game while shooting 47.6 percent from the field and 38.9 percent from deep. he can attack the basket off the bounce, hit from the outside and create for others when defenders collapse on him.

Through four games this postseason, he is averaging 19.3 points per game.

The Bulls will rely on DeMar DeRozan and Nikola Vucevic to score even more if LaVine is sidelined, while Coby White and Ayo Dosunmu will likely see more playing time as the team tries to keep its season alive.

Fresh off another disappointing Game 1 performance, DeMar DeRozan was undeterred by his disappointing outing in the Chicago Bulls' 93-86 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks at Fiserv Forum. 

 "I don't know what the hell was going on. Probably a week off. But it just wasn't me," DeRozan told reporters after Sunday's game. "All of us, we've just got to get that feel. ... Every shot I took felt good. I guarantee you me, Zach [LaVine] or Vooch [Nikola Vucevic] aren't going to miss that many shots again." 

DeRozan finished with 18 points on 6-of-25 shooting, continuing a trend of Game 1 misfires that have marred his playoff career. He's averaged just 18.5 points on 35.7 percent shooting in playoff Game 1s.

The Bulls followed DeRozan's lead against the defending champs, shooting a ghastly 32.3 percent from the floor. DeRozan, LaVine and Vucevic shot a combined 21-of-71, and the trio accounted for 74 percent of Chicago's shot attempts on a night in which none of them could buy a bucket.

The Bulls were locked in on the other end of the floor, holding Milwaukee to 40.5 percent shooting. The Bucks didn't score more than 23 points in a quarter after opening with a 34-point first. 

It's unlikely the shooting woes will carry over for either side heading into Game 2, but the Bulls have to feel like they let a winnable game slip away Sunday.

There is not much optimism among scouts and league executives about the Chicago Bulls unseating the Milwaukee Bucks in Round 1.

"Chicago's a skeleton of what they could have been, unfortunately," one scout told Josh Robbins of The Athletic. "Lonzo Ball’s out, and they're just not the same team. They've struggled recently. Their defense is questionable. They've had a good year."

The Bulls went into the All-Star break tied with the Miami Heat for the best record in the Eastern Conference, emerging as one of the biggest surprises of the season's first half. They've been one of the sport's worst teams since the break, going 8-15, a mark better than only two East teams (Indiana Pacers and Washington Wizards).

If you're keeping track at home, yes, that means the Bulls were a worse team than the Detroit Pistons and Orlando Magic over the final stretch run of the season.

Injuries have played a large factor in the downfall, with Ball and Alex Caruso missing significant time and stripping Chicago of its two most consistent perimeter defenders. The Bulls had the NBA's sixth-worst offensive and defensive rating after the All-Star break, per NBA.com, getting outscored by 7.1 points per 100 possessions. Only the tanking Portland Trail Blazers and Oklahoma City Thunder were worse.

So, suffice it to say, playing a first-round series against the defending NBA champions at the moment isn't exactly an ideal scenario for the Bulls.