SACRAMENTO, Calif. — It wasn’t a revenge game. Not for Zach LaVine.
LaVine missed his first four shots in his first game against the Chicago Bulls in more than eight years. The Sacramento Kings guard didn’t make a single basket in the first half Thursday night at the Golden 1 Center, just three free throws. LaVine finished with eight points — matching his season-low — in the Bulls’ 128-116 victory.
Still, there was no anger, no frustration. Maybe a few nerves. But LaVine had nothing but gratitude for the Bulls in his first reunion with his former team — because Chicago is a place he will never fully leave.
Even after he was traded ahead of the deadline in February, LaVine didn’t want to fully let go of the Bulls. He tried to stay in the team group chat for as long as possible, insisting that he should be allowed to stick around and talk some mess.
On Wednesday night, the Bulls stayed in the same hotel where LaVine has been living since the trade. So the guard strolled into their team meeting Thursday morning, keeping a straight face while chastising his former teammates: “Don’t act like y’all ain’t known me before.”
“There’s no bad blood,” LaVine said. “We had a really good tenure. Business is business. You just remember the memories and the relationships. That’s what sticks with you more.”
The trade wasn’t exactly a surprise, but it wasn’t news that LaVine was fully prepared to receive.
LaVine was taking his son Saint for a walk in the neighborhood around their California home when he received the call on Feb. 2. His wife, Hunter, had given birth to their third child only four days prior. When he had left Chicago nearly a week earlier to be with his family, LaVine knew he might never return.
It was a peaceful parting. LaVine said his goodbyes to Jerry and Michael Reinsdorf, then to Artūras Karnišovas and Marc Eversley. Each conversation carried the same bittersweet understanding — if either party wanted to grow, they had to move on.
On that same February day, the Kings were halfway across the country in Minneapolis for a matchup with the Timberwolves.
DeMar DeRozan woke up from a nap in his hotel room to three missed calls from LaVine. The former teammates spoke regularly throughout the season. But consecutive phone calls four days before the trade deadline — and only hours after the Luka Dončić trade upended the entire league — meant something was off.
DeRozan called back. No answer. He called again. This time, LaVine picked up — and immediately began asking questions. He had a trade bonus to think about. He was nervous about moving days after the birth of his third child.
But DeRozan had no doubts about any move that reunited him with his former teammate, giving LaVine one answer: “Let’s make it happen.”
When DeRozan crashed LaVine’s first photo session in Sacramento, the guard met him with a wide smile and an immediate wisecrack: “Man, you couldn’t stay away from me for more than three months?”
LaVine and DeRozan always have held each other in high regard, each viewing the other as a brother first and a teammate second. But they haven’t always been the most natural fit on the court. Their styles can be at odds — DeRozan slow and methodical, LaVine relentlessly up-tempo.
But with the Kings, they have a second shot to make the pairing work. LaVine feels they’ve learned from their mistakes in Chicago, figured out the best parts of their partnership and how to amplify them. The pair is stuck in a familiar situation, battling injuries across their roster as they fight to hold onto a play-in spot. Still, there’s hope that maybe this time it will all work out.
It doesn’t hurt that LaVine is playing the best basketball of his career. Before the trade, he already had reached an unprecedented level of efficiency, averaging 24 points while shooting 51.1% overall and 41.1% from 3-point range. This was a version of LaVine that DeRozan had waited years to reconnect with on the court.
“I know how unhealthy he was — especially my last two years in Chicago — and how frustrated he was not being able to be himself, to be out there and help the team in ways I knew he could,” DeRozan said. “So this year, just him being healthy was a major part. I knew how hard he worked this past summer so I wasn’t surprised.”
No ending is ever immediate. There’s a house to sell, a final move to complete. For now, LaVine is living a life put on hold, sleeping in a hotel and checking in on his wife and children in Los Angeles whenever he can. This will be a long goodbye.
For LaVine, the last few weeks of upheaval have offered perspective. He was drafted by the Minnesota Timberwolves, but he grew up in Chicago. Over the past eight years, LaVine became a husband and a father. Along the way, he grew from a young star to a veteran leader in a locker room desperate for guidance.
“I really saw him invest an enormous amount — not only to himself personally, but I think he really tried to invest in his team,” Bulls coach Billy Donovan said.
Donovan saw LaVine at his best and his worst. The 1-for-14 shooting night in 2022 when Donovan benched LaVine for the final four minutes of play. A pair of 50-point flurries over the years. The stretch of last summer when LaVine decided to put his frustration — over losing, over trade speculation, over years of being injured — behind him to finally find peace.
But what Donovan will remember most about LaVine are the times when he heard laughter from the empty court at the Advocate Center during a late night of preparing film or working out. Donovan would walk over to see LaVine on the hardwood, his sons toddling behind him, trying to keep up as he put up a couple hundred extra shots.
This is how Donovan will remember the guard: as a young man taking pride in his game and his growth and himself. And it’s the version of himself that LaVine hopes will remain in Chicago long after his departure.
“I put that jersey on with a lot of pride,” LaVine said. “I love Chicago. Always will. If you go out there and try your best and it don’t work, sometimes it’s frustrating, both on the organization and as a player. But I wore it with my heart on my sleeve. I can’t get mad at that.”
