LOS ANGELES — Obstacles finally have been overcome.
Well, they’re more like impediments, but the Bulls will take a win when they can get it when it comes to guard Lonzo Ball and his recovery from three surgeries on his left knee.
Coach Billy Donovan said Ball has started sprinting, cutting and jumping with no pain or setbacks, even though the activity has come two months later than the original timetable.
“He’s progressed into that,” Donovan said Saturday. “Responded well. Not with my own eyes, but some of the things the medical guys have shown me is he looks good moving. Just really happy for him personally with his progress. He’s worked hard to put himself in this position, and hopefully he can continue to progress like he’s progressing.”
And that’s where things get murky.
The last surgery he had just over a year ago was a cartilage transplant. Now, the sample size is tiny, and the science has vastly improved over the years, but no NBA player has successfully returned from that procedure.
On top of that, Ball, who was on the Bulls’ bench for the 112-102 loss to the Clippers, still has much bigger hurdles in front of him than running and jumping. There’s this little thing of actually playing basketball again in a five-on-five situation to see how the knee holds up against contact.
When, where or how that will take place remains unknown — as does what an 82-game regular season would even look like for him. No back-to-backs, minutes restrictions, could he start? Donovan said none of those scenarios has been discussed.
“No, we have not talked about that,” Donovan said. “Everything has been his rehab and recovery and getting him back to where he can play. This is something that’s unprecedented. He’s been able to kind of pass every hurdle so far. We’ll see when he gets back to playing five-on-five.
“With the start of training camp [next October], there will be a pretty extensive amount of time. I don’t know when him being cleared to [play five-on-five] is, but we really haven’t discussed, ‘Hey, training camp next year, he’s back, he’s in the fold.’ We haven’t done any of that.”
Another tricky aspect is Ball will be entering the last year of his four-year, $80 million deal and has the player option for $21.4 million.
He last played in only 35 games in the 2021-22 season, so it will be important for him to show that he is contract-worthy.
Slipped away
The Bulls would’ve loved to finish the West Coast trip 4-0, but the Clippers outscored them 29-17 in the fourth quarter, and all good things came to an abrupt end.
Forward DeMar DeRozan led the Bulls with 24 points. Big man Nikola Vucevic had 22 points and 11 rebounds.
Even after a 3-1 trip, the Bulls (31-33) remained locked into the No. 9 seed in the Eastern Conference with 18 games to go.
“It’s a bummer because we had an opportunity to go 4-0, but we didn’t do that,” guard Ayo Dosunmu said. “We gotta just build from this, keep the momentum up.
“Our confidence is high because we’re not leaving here with a moral victory. We’re upset. We understand we can’t get it back, but we were good enough to be right there and win this game.”
Brief scare
Forward Torrey Craig went down in the first half after his right foot got stepped on, but he got up on his own and returned soon after.
Craig has missed 29 games since mid-December and had just returned from a sprained right knee, so there was a sigh of relief when another setback apparently was avoided.
