For the Chicago Bulls, this season has gone better than many anticipated; nonetheless, Chicago’s injury problems have not gone smoothly. This season, the Bulls have lost a number of important players to injuries, some of them more than once, and they are currently going through a difficult period. Zach LaVine and Patrick Williams are two of the Bulls’ most important players who are presently out.
The Bulls are still pushing for a postseason berth at 22-25 on the season, despite their injury woes. This is a result of the team’s excellent response to injuries thus far this season. Guys have stood up when needed, and the lineup adjustments that were required have been made. It’s not simple, though, and Bulls head coach Billy Donovan recently talked about the difficulties these adjustments bring.
Billy Donovan told the media on Tuesday, “We ended up playing Andre [Drummond] and Vooch [Nikola Vucevic] to start the Portland game a little bit together.” “They [Portland] ultimately went small right away. Teams will occasionally adapt to that, and we’ll stick with it for a while. After Andre [Drummond] committed his second foul, he was taken off the court. That may be a lineup that we could look at, and I have nothing against doing that. One individual who has absorbed a lot of those minutes there is Alex Caruso. We are definitely much smaller on the wing with those two men out, especially defensively.
Alex [Caruso] has played every position in the league and has done an excellent job of guarding a variety of players. We therefore have a great deal of faith in him. The other player, Julian [Phillips], should be able to provide us with some size at that position. Then there’s the potential that Andre [Drummond] could be out there, as I indicated. However, a portion of that will depend on matchups and how things appear [online]. I believe that Portland was really significant at the power forward position if you look at their rotations and what they had been doing. We were reasonably at ease doing that, but Chauncey [Billups] ultimately ended up
Keeping Jerami Grant at the power forward position and going small right away will make the matchup more challenging because he moves around more than some teams who play with two typical big men. Thus, a portion of that will be matchup-based. However, we will need to deploy Dalen [Terry], Julian [Phillips], and Alex [Caruso]. We’re going to have to decide by committee, you know.
As you can see, with all of these ailments, the Bulls are having difficulty finding a lineup that works. It will be interesting to watch how they do during this span of time as they will need to adjust for at least a few more weeks.
