It’s time for Chicago Bulls fan to begin tracking a new era of the season.
The first 36 games were cleanly divided into two segments: before and after Zach LaVine’s injury. The Bulls opened with a dismal 5-14 stretch before LaVine was sidelined with a right foot injury, then bounced back with a 10-7 run while their star was out. Friday opened a new chapter on a new version of the team with LaVine back on the court.
LaVine made his return after 38 days in a 104-91 win over the Charlotte Hornets. It was a somewhat quiet reintroduction: 15 points on 6-of-11 shooting, five rebounds and four assists in 29 minutes, 55 seconds. The Bulls relied on Coby White, who had 22 points and six assists, to fuel the offense.
Playing on a minutes restriction, LaVine came off the bench alongside center Nikola Vucevic, who also returned from injury after missing two games because of a strained groin.
After the win, LaVine acknowledged that he’ll need several games to get back to top form.
“I’m going to sleep well tonight, y’all don’t understand,” LaVine joked. “I had a couple rebounds where I could have pushed the ball on the break and I was just looking for DeMar (DeRozan) or Coby, like I’m just going to go to the corner real fast and catch my breath.”
LaVine felt bolstered by the performance even with his conditioning still lagging. But that result alone won’t be enough to quiet the questions that defined LaVine’s absence.
The team’s success while LaVine was recovering fueled doubt around the guard’s ability to fit back in with the Bulls. And that only accentuated the uncertainty created by prior reports that LaVine himself wanted out of Chicago.
After a morning shootaround at the Advocate Center, LaVine didn’t want to talk about records or reports surrounding his status with the Bulls.
“My main objective is to come out here and just get back to playing,” LaVine said. “If I let opinions affect me, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today. I could care less what people think about me. I know who I am and what I do. I know what I’ve got to go out there and do is help provide for the team and help us win so that’s all I’ve been trying to focus on.”
The Bulls played differently in the 17 games they were without LaVine.
The offense is moving the ball quickly, spreading shooting evenly and making shots behind the breakout performance of White. The team is slowly molding itself back into the top-10 defensive form of last season.
The result was an immediate improvement as the Bulls broke out of their slump and began to edge closer to .500.
“We caught a great rhythm in December doing the same thing that we were working on in training camp,” LaVine said. “It was great to see it actually start coming in and clicking.”
Whether the timing of those variables — LaVine’s absence and the sudden offensive improvement — were correlated or just coincidental is the question.
Despite the team’s improvement in his absence, LaVine doesn’t feel he needs to change anything about his approach to meld effectively into the current style of play.
“I want to come in and do my job like I was doing before,” LaVine said. “That’s help the team any way possible, if it’s scoring, energy, rebounding. Come in and compete. I’m just excited to go out there and be with my guys again.”
LaVine isn’t the type of player to feign ignorance about the conversations being held around him in the media or fan base. He knows his first 19 games of the season were viewed poorly. He knows reports claim there isn’t a market for him to be traded. And he knows the team’s 10-7 correction in his absence has been a catalyst for a pointed question: Are the Bulls better without him?
But LaVine also refused to engage with those questions past acknowledging their existence. He did not address whether he is still interested in a trade, something he has never confirmed nor denied. Instead, he stuck to the same mantra: If he performs up to standard on the court, the questions will quickly answer themselves.
“There’s a narrative for everything,” LaVine said. “You can spin something one way, then take it another way the next day. I’m OK with that. As long as I come out here and do my job and be good with my guys, my teammates, and now that I’m healthy go out there and compete when I’ve been sitting down for the last month and a half — I’m more than fine with that.”