The clock is ticking on the short tenures of Anfernee Simons and Jaden Ivey in Chicago.
Neither guard had much time to make a first impression on the Bulls after the February trade deadline. Ivey played 115 minutes over four games before starting to suffer knee soreness that forced him into an unexpected shutdown. Simons made it two games longer before he began to feel discomfort from a wrist fracture suffered in the preseason with the Boston Celtics.
Now both players could be weeks from a full-season shutdown. The Bulls announced Monday that Ivey will need one more week before reevaluation and Simons will need 10 more days before he can be reassessed. The team is positive about both players’ ability to return; at the same time, they face a rapidly unrealistic timeline.
Only 26 days are left in the regular season after Tuesday — and unless the Bulls pull off a miracle
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, they won’t play any games after their regular-season finale April 12 in Dallas. Through Monday they were six games below the cutoff line for the play-in tournament.If Ivey or Simons is cleared for full contact in the next two weeks, they still would require multiple days to ramp up to game-ready fitness. For Ivey, that means 11 games at the most. For Simons — whose reevaluation will take place while the Bulls are on a four-game road swing — the most optimistic outlook is seven games.
Still, coach Billy Donovan said it’s important to attempt to bring both players back before the season ends.
“All these guys are pretty competitive,” Donovan said. “They want to play. … Everybody right now is pushing toward trying to help these guys get back to play. That’s where we’re at right now.
“If something changes in a couple weeks — you get so far to the end of the season where there’s not very many games left — that may change. But the hope is if you’ve got 10 or 12 games left and those guys can possibly play, then they’d want to play.”
An added tension stems from the lost opportunity to assess two potential free agents. Simons will be an unrestricted free agent this summer after playing out the final season of a four-year, $100 million deal signed with the Portland Trail Blazers in 2022. Ivey will be a restricted free agent, which the Bulls originally hoped to use to their advantage to gain an inside track on a young player with potential.
Although he hasn’t played much with the Bulls, Simons has a seven-year portfolio of NBA work, so the front office feels relatively comfortable in its ability to assess his value and potential fit. But Ivey is more of a mystery.
Ivey still is feeling the effects of a broken leg suffered on the first day of 2025 with the Detroit Pistons. His knee soreness stemmed from a lack of strength in the recovered leg, a common symptom in athletes undergoing a major yearlong recovery.
While he was sidelined, Ivey was focused on rebuilding strength to balance out his legs. Donovan said Ivey is now pain-free and close to a return to the court. But it’s unclear whether that short window of conditioning would be enough to bring Ivey back to his former level of explosiveness — and it’s even more unproven whether he’ll ever regain the pop that defined his early years in Detroit.
“The season ends and he’s got a complete runway of the summer of training and strengthening and doing those things,” Donovan said. “I don’t think there’s any question, everybody feels very confident he could get back to where he was athletically. Can he quite get there between now and the end of the season? I don’t know. But we believe he would be much, much better off.”
The race has begun for both players and the medical team. In the meantime, Bulls leadership must decide whether two weeks of assessment for either guard is worth a hard push at the end of a season focused on must-lose stakes for draft lottery odds.