The conversation will have to take place at some point.
Maybe it will be later in the rehabilitation process when Zach LaVine starts scrimmaging or maybe Billy Donovan will sit down with the two-time All-Star right before he’s about to return from his right foot injury to start playing games.
All the coach would say on Saturday was it hadn’t taken place yet.
“I have not talked to him about that,” Donovan said, when asked if he spoke to LaVine about his reassimilation back into the Bulls lineup. “I think the main focus and priority has been just his health and him getting back. Just checking in on him from that standpoint.”
While the 109-95 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers was a small setback – especially considering the visiting team was missing Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley and Darius Garland with injuries – the Bulls (13-18) were still 8-4 with LaVine in street clothes.
Bigger picture?
Since the “Big Three” of LaVine, Nikola Vucevic and DeMar DeRozan came together for the start of the 2021-22 season, the Bulls are now 19-14 (.576) when LaVine doesn’t play. To put that in perspective, they would currently sit in the No. 6 spot of the Eastern Conference with that winning percentage.
The loss to the Cavs (17-13) had them sitting 10th.
“I think for us the one thing (LaVine) does provide is obviously an elite offensive player to the rim and obviously shooting the basketball,” Donovan said. “I’ve said this all along – nothing has necessarily changed – we need him shooting the ball when he’s open. That’s good for our team. And when there’s hard closeouts him attacking the paint. I think he’s more than capable of doing those things and I think that just adds another offensive player out there.”
Maybe LaVine would have helped against Cleveland.
The red-hot three-point shooting for the Bulls hit a wall, finishing the night 8-for-35 (22.9%), and scoring overall was hard to come by with DeRozan the high man at just 21 points.
What LaVine couldn’t have fixed? The second-chance points, as Cleveland outscored the Bulls a whopping 30-4 in that department thanks to 15 offensive rebounds.
“I felt like we were a step slow quite honestly,” Donovan said of the issues on the glass. “That certainly was a factor. The amount of times they got it back, got fouled, it just kind of slowed us down quite a bit. Even on some rotations we were a step slow.”
DeRozan called it just a bad night at the office.
“They’re big,” DeRozan said of the Cavs. “They took advantage of that. That kind of hurt us. I hate to say it but it was just one of those games where I felt like we had the right intent in our mind, but we just weren’t coming out with where the output needed to be.”
It didn’t help that former Bull Max Strus again came back to haunt them, hitting five threes and scoring 26 points.
Next up for the Bulls will be a two-day Christmas break, but also on the horizon as early as late next week could be LaVine starting to take contact in practices.
That’s when it will get very interesting for LaVine and the Bulls.
“The biggest thing I’m concerned about quite honestly with (LaVine) coming back is how does he find his rhythm back?” Donovan said. “I think when you miss the number of games that he’s going to miss, it always kind of takes you a little time to get your footing back under you. But how we’ve tried to play identity-wise has not necessarily changed since he’s been out. It’s not like he went out and we went in and totally revamped the playbook. We’ve just game after game emphasized the things that we’ve felt are important.”