Lonzo Ball will pause his knee rehab for at least 10 days after suffering a setback during his recovery.
Speaking to reporters on Monday prior to the Chicago Bulls game with the Toronto Raptors, head coach Billy Donovan said that Ball will continue strength work but will take a break from running.
Ball has not played since Jan. 14 with what the team initially thought was a knee bruise. Further evaluation later revealed that he had suffered a torn meniscus.
“The feeling was, let’s really pull back on what he’s doing and let’s let him, I don’t want to use the word rest because it’s not like he’s sitting around doing nothing — he’ll do strength training and those kind of things — but take a break on the running and trying to ramp him up,” Donovan said via ESPN.
A 10-day pause in Ball’s rehab takes the Bulls through the end of March with only five games remaining in the regular season after April 1. The initial timeline for Ball’s recovery was six-to-eight weeks.
Obviously, it’s coming to the end of the season. … I think that they felt like, ‘OK if he can, over this 10-day period, really get back to the ramp-up period, because he has been out for quite some time,’ that would enable him to get back into contact relatively soon.
Ball was averaging 13 points, 5.4 rebounds and 5.1 assists in his first season with the Bulls before getting injured. The Bulls were 27-12 when Ball went down, and are 14-17 since then.
They dropped 5th in the Eastern Conference after being among the top-2 teams earlier this year. Chicago’s defense has fallen off a cliff, and they are now the 21st ranked defense in the league, allowing 112.1 points per 100 possessions.
Comments