If you take a nice, long look at this year’s Chicago Bulls, you may not see all that much.
At 30–36, they’re fighting for their lives to merely finish in ninth or 10th place, so they can qualify for the league’s play-in round. Despite having three players—DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine and Nikola Vučević—who’ve been All-Stars multiple times in just the past few years, the team ranks seventh worst in the NBA in offense this season. And with a month to play, the wildly inconsistent club has failed to log a four-game winning streak this season, despite possessing the talent to dominate Denver on the road Wednesday and take down Milwaukee and Boston at other points throughout the campaign. Few teams have been as confounding as the Bulls.
But as odd as it might sound, the absence of Lonzo Ball—who hasn’t been on the court in almost 14 months due to knee issues—really does seem like the difference-maker between the Bulls being a fringe play-in team and being a contender in the loaded Eastern Conference. And that’s a harsh reality when considering Thursday’s brutal report: that Ball will likely need a third operation on the troubled knee that’s already held him out of action since January 2022.
Before Ball went down, Chicago—the franchise that had lost more than any other NBA franchise in the preceding four seasons—had begun to look legit. LaVine and DeRozan coexisted and occasionally thrived on offense because both had the luxury of playing off the ball a bit more. The offense had more movement on the backside. The defense was surprisingly suffocating, particularly in late-game scenarios, with the 6–6 Ball and Alex Caruso hounding ballhandlers and clamping down on bigs who had their backs to the basket. Fast breaks were frequent because of how Ball liked to push the ball in transition following misses. And perhaps most useful: Ball had finally grown fully comfortable with his long-range jumper, hitting 42.3% of his threes on more than seven attempts per contest—an invaluable asset to have when three players like DeRozan, LaVine and Vučević are often looking to kick the ball out of double teams.
Some things have maintained without Ball’s presence. The Chicago defense, spearheaded by Caruso, has been surprisingly good this season and is tied for fifth in efficiency. But no team takes (or makes) fewer triples than the Bulls, highlighting Lonzo’s absence as a budding sharpshooter from deep. At times, LaVine—for all his incredible offensive talent—takes ill-timed heat checks that wouldn’t happen if Ball was there to give the offense more space and flow. In many ways, Ball was the on-court Gorilla Glue for Chicago to be a top-10 team on both ends.
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Without him, things often look flimsy—particularly because the front office made minimal changes to the roster in the offseason (signing Goran Dragić, who’s since been waived, and Andre Drummond) and shockingly stood pat at the trade deadline (they did pick up Patrick Beverley after he was waived). There will be some flexibility in the months to come, as the 32-year-old Vučević will be a free agent, and the team will have the option of listening to offers for DeRozan, 33, or LaVine, who turns 28 on Friday. But the question of “Where does this team go now?” looms large for executive Artūras Karnišovas as Ball prepares for a third procedure. Ball, still just 25 years old, has two years left on the four-year contract he signed.
Perhaps the strangest thing in all of this: Ball’s initial injury in January 2022 was described as a small meniscus tear—certainly a scary ailment, but one that isn’t wildly uncommon in the NBA, and that can often be repaired in a way that allows players to return a month and a half or two later. Cam Johnson of the Nets, for instance, tore his meniscus in his right knee back in November and, following a procedure, has been back playing since mid-January. Most assumed Ball would need that amount of recovery time with the Bulls.
But with him unable to return last season, Chicago cratered in the standings, going from first place as late in early February 2022 to sixth place by the end of the campaign. The Bulls never mounted much of a first-round challenge for the Bucks, who finished Chicago in five games. Then last September—just weeks before this season kicked off—the team announced he’d be having a second procedure on his knee, this one being a clean-out, or arthroscopic surgery.
Now, seeing that Ball is on the cusp of a third procedure on that knee begins to alter the question—it’s not as much when he’ll be back anymore, as can he come back and play at a competitive level at some point? The reports had already grown concerning, suggesting that Ball was experiencing pain in his rehab whenever he tried to run, cut or jump.
It was fun to see the life, spirit and music return to the United Center, with Chicago having a winning Bulls club for the first time in years. But now there’s a far different tune, both for the team and for Ball, who’d shown to be such a great player and fit for the Bulls, yet now seems at risk of returning to those heights he’d reached.
