WASHINGTON — Guard Lonzo Ball sat in the visiting locker room at Capital One Arena on Tuesday, still in street clothes as most of his teammates were dressing for the game against the Wizards.
The hope is that he’ll be joining them in that ritual again soon — in all likelihood Wednesday night in Orlando, when the Bulls play the Magic.
Coach Billy Donovan said Ball went through another series of workouts, including one-on-one contact to test his injured right wrist, and unless he wakes up in Florida with soreness, he should be a go.
“In terms of his workout and whatever [the medical team] has to do, as long as there’s no setbacks, there’s a strong possibility he’ll play,” Donovan said. “He has been doing some contact one-on-one, some shooting, catching, shooting off the dribble — he’s doing all that stuff. It’s been, ‘How is he feeling coming out of those workouts?’ That’s been the problem previously, because when we had him doing stuff, he was having soreness afterward. That’s why it backed up.”
Ball, who had been sidelined for more than 2½ years before this season as he recovered from three surgeries on his left knee, played in three of the Bulls’ first four games but injured his wrist falling backward Oct. 28 against the Grizzlies. Tests showed that if he continued to try to play through the injury, he could face season-ending surgery, so the Bulls sat him, causing him to miss the last 15 games.
Even strictly limited to 15-16 minutes per game, he was productive off the bench before he was hurt, finishing with a plus in the plus/minus category in every appearance, including a plus-16 against the Grizzlies.
For a guy in the final year of his deal and trying to re-establish his career, the timing of the wrist injury couldn’t have been worse.
“In talking to medical, we’ll have to probably go back to where it was at the start of the year, where it’s probably going to be 15-16 minutes, four-minute stints at a time,” Donovan said. “There is a strong possibility that if he can build up, maybe 20-22 [minutes], but he understands he’ll never get back to 35-minute nights.”
Back-to-backs also are out of the question for the time being.
“He will be playing with some tape around his wrist,” Donovan said. “There’s some getting used to shooting the ball and doing those things, and I wouldn’t say he’s completely pain-free, but he’s a lot, lot better in terms of it being manageable. I was impressed where he was physically.”
Injured forward Patrick Williams was still only taking free throws and doing some light shooting Tuesday after missing four games since being shut down because of inflammation-related pain in the same left foot on which he had season-ending surgery last year.. Donovan had hoped the Bulls could start ramping up his activity after the weekend.
Center Nikola Vucevic entered Tuesday tied for the lead in first-half scoring with Zach LaVine (11.7 points per game). He set the tone for the Bulls again against the Wizards with a team-high 11 points in the first 24 minutes of an eventual 127-108 win.
