CHICAGO — The Chicago Bulls will miss goalkeeper Zach Lavigne in Saturday night’s game against the Cleveland Cavaliers with a sore left knee, but they will have goalkeeper Alex Caruso in the squad for the first time since he sustained a knee injury. Wrist surgery in January.
Lavigne has been dealing with knee pain since January, and it flared up again after Wednesday’s game against the Detroit Pistons. Kobe White replaced Lavigne in the starting line-up.
Bulls coach Billy Donovan said the team will deal with Lavigne’s knee on a daily basis for the remainder of the season.
“The feeling was to see if we could get him back to zero where he’s feeling a little better,” Donovan said before the match. “It’s not one of those things that we’ve planned, that’s what we do, we put him here on his back. We put him here. It’s going to be day in and day out.” Just a day to see how you feel.
Lavigne will miss his 11th game since injuring his knee in the first quarter of a game against the Warriors on January 12. My post-injury MRI came back clean and he saw a knee specialist in Los Angeles the week before the All-Stars. He broke in February, receiving treatment with platelet-rich plasma, cortisone injections, and fluid drainage from his left knee.
LaVine has played in the Bulls’ first seven games after the break, averaging 24.4 points on 48.2% FG (36.7% from 3), not far from his production this season of 24.6 points on 48.2% FG (39.5% from 3)). In 54 games.
“All I got from the doctors was that they were totally comfortable playing him,” Donovan said. “It’s something he will have to manage and deal with throughout the season.”
The Bulls will get an addition with Caruso returning from the squad for the first time since he broke his left wrist on January 21. He will be restricted from 24 to 30 minutes, playing only his third match since December 20. Caruso has been solo work permit for the past 10 days and participated in full practice on Friday.
“[La temporada] It’s been one game here, one game there, he’s been missing for a long period of time. So sure, I think getting it back gives you a shock. No doubt about it, but I don’t know where he is. He hasn’t played in a long time,” Donovan said. Long “.
Caruso, who is playing his 29th game of the season, said after training on Friday that his wrist would need time to get stronger for the rest of the season, but he didn’t feel restricted by anything on the field.
“It’s still incomplete, not 100 percent healed, but the bones are healed,” Caruso said Friday. “The only pain and stiffness is just the soft tissue healing from the surgery. I feel like I’m in a good place. We’ll see how it develops. If I can keep this up, maybe there are good things to come.”