Josh Giddey feels lucky.
When the Chicago Bulls guard rolled his right ankle in Monday’s win over the Indiana Pacers, he expected the worst. Giddey has rolled his ankle plenty of times in his young career. This one, without question, hurt more than any other.
Giddey left the United Center in a walking boot — and in a cloud of frustration — as the Bulls medical staff prepared him for a multiweek absence. In the hope of speeding his recovery, he slept that night with his ankle in an ice machine.
Every 40 minutes, the machine turned off and sounded an alarm, waking Giddey to turn it back on and repeat the cooling and compression cycle. By Tuesday morning, he was able to walk around his room without the boot.
The pain isn’t completely gone, but Giddey was back to walking at a slow pace on a treadmill during practice Wednesday at the Advocate Center. He will sit out Thursday’s home game against the Brooklyn Nets but is expected to travel on the upcoming six-game road swing with the hope of being back on the court by the end of the lengthy trip.
“I thought when I did it, it was a lot worse,” Giddey said. “I’m very fortunate it wasn’t as bad as what I originally thought. I’m happy it turned out that way. It’s kind of day to day now. Hopefully I can get back on the court relatively soon.”
Giddey missed training camp this season after rupturing his anterior talofibular ligament (ATFL) while playing for Australia in the Paris Olympics. The new injury occurred in the same ankle, but Giddey said they are unrelated and the Bulls medical staff is not worried about instability or lack of strength in the ankle.
Coach Billy Donovan expressed optimism about the condensed timeline for Giddey’s return — especially after his breakout performance in nine games since the All-Star break, in which he averaged 23.1 points, 10.9 rebounds and 8.4 assists while shooting 52.2% from 3-point range.
In the meantime, however, the Bulls will be short-handed in both length and point guard options. Giddey has been playing a hybrid point forward role to accommodate for injuries at both power forward and point guard. Without him, the Bulls will lean heavily on rookie Matas Buzelis and Patrick Williams at the four.
The Bulls also are anticipating a longer absence for point guard Lonzo Ball, who has missed the last five games with a sprained right wrist.
Ball sprained the wrist earlier in the season, missing 15 games in November before returning and playing through minimal pain. Although he was able to avoid surgery then by resting the wrist, the injury has been aggravated and has reached a pain threshold Ball can’t play through.
“I think he’s getting better, it’s just been slow,” Donovan said. “The biggest issue has been him catching and shooting the basketball. We dodged a bullet, but they feel pretty comfortable about where he’s at in terms of him playing. This is going to be something unfortunately he’s going to deal with the rest of the year. It’s not going to get totally resolved until the season’s over.”
The Bulls will rely on trade-deadline addition Tre Jones to hold down the point guard position as they await the potential returns of Ball and Giddey — and push for a higher seed in the play-in tournament as they ride a three-game winning streak into Thursday’s game.
